FoxFoxFox

@TheWaterRuss Honey I have pitch black eyes and I can see your soul.

@Preetom <3

Well, no. This has nothing to do with intellectualism. It has nothing to do with satisfying intellect either. Ultimately, it comes down to your personal experience. Perspective is everything.

The fact of the Self remains independent of memories, as you say. What I mentioned was a subjective experience of being born.

@Preetom Actually i have something to share about this. Absolutely. I have a very vivid memory of the moment of choosing to inhabit this body. Prior to that the world was slowly being created. Projected "inside me". Think of an OBE that ends when you enter an infant's body - which is what i remember. This is a very big reason why I am so adamant in telling people that their personal, egoic existance is not really ignorant, or separate from God. It is literally a form consciousness has adopted.

@Viking Tell them that they can always kill themselves tomorrow. Buy some time. The do your best for them to experience a little joy, even if its only a tiny amount.

@theking00 Who is asking? Who is this "I" who wants his life to be more peaceful? How do you know your real nature is not peaceful to begin with?

@Tausif Ahmed Your immediate experience is the only thing you have of reality. In other words, what you experience is what you are, and that is reality, regardless of how that experience looks like. There is an important distinction between an spiritual experience and enlightenment. An spiritual experience, as the name suggest, should really only be used to refer to experiences that has something to do with the spiritual dimension of consciousness. In contrast, enlightenment is complete awareness of your true nature as consciousness, independent of whatever dimension the "I" experiences. From "I am" to "I-I" to silence and bliss.

@Tony 845 Yes i've dealt with this stuff. Just let them happen. I suggest you meditate by yourself where people don't see you. They won't understand and will freak out. Also, make sure the room is empty of potentially hazardous objects so you don't accidentally hurt yourself. Kriyas resolve themselves quickly if you don't get attached to them and try to influence them.

@Sharp Fun fact: when you die, you will just come back. I suggest you try and get a direct experience of death while keeping your body alive. You'll see how consciousness literally gets bored and recreates the world to reincarnate directly. It makes suicide kinda pointless.

@Sharp But you see, all you wrote here is still what you think about consciousness. Prior to this, you thought that there were people who acted and did things, and that you were one of those people. Now you think that there are no people who do things and act. The truth lies in the middle, and it will ALWAYS escape the grasp of the mind. At some dimension of consciousness, what you experience here will be the truth. At another dimension, the experience will be drastically different. The stillness and peace, which people attribute to the screen or God is the only experience that is always there. But the reality is that there is no screen either.

@Surfingthewave Take "you" out of the equation.

@phllip103 Well the direct experience of the Self deepens and deepen to no end from afaik. As for the weightlifting analogy, it actually works very well with regards to energy. That is of course dependent on whether or not you have an animated Kundalini. But anyhow, there are always limits to how much of the energy your physical system can handle, and much like weightlifting, prolonged exposure will increase your tolerance. Unlike weightlifting however, i don't think there is a hard limit.

@Surfingthewave Who is this "you" who experiences all this? Have you actually pinpointed it? Can "you" be anything but the Self? These are questions that by themselves would take very little time to answer. That you'v been at it for 4 years without success is an indication that your true desire is something else. Perhaps you have some idea of how enlightenment should be and you won't stop until your direct experience exactly conforms with that. From what I see, most people who enter the path first do it because they want siddhis and special powers. They want solutions to their life problems. Well enlightenment is none of that. If you really want enlightenment, well, you just got to realize that you already are enlightened. Does it take 4 years for a cat to know she is a cat? No. The cat just "cats" regardless

Well there you go, that is ego identification right there. You got to question your basic assumptions about yourself more. You already say that you feel the ego is awareness. That means you are able to objectify the ego. Then who is the subject? Who is the real you? Awareness comes first, then the ego - which really is a complex of thoughts. So inquire into the ego and see if it is real.

@Nadosa You say you can't pin point who you are but look again. You obviously have the notion that you are a 'someone' who suffers. You have lost most of your false notions about your nature, but the process is incomplete. So ask yourself, who is it is that is suffering. Who is it that can't take all this anymore? Who is it that is tired? Try and find the answer. Once you find the answer, you will be immersed in the Self, and there is no mind to cause you any suffering.

@How to be wise Excellent. If you stay with the experience, it will gradually shift from nothingness to peace and then bliss.

@Giulio Bevilacqua What were some the specifics of your discussion? How do you imagine a society of enlightened people will look like?

Recently I've seen some threads here where people argue with each other to challenge people's claims to enlightenment. The argument goes something like this: "Ganesh, you believe in such and such and that is the paradigm you believe in." The point being that because someone has certain beliefs, they could not be enlightened. Ganesh then defends their own point of view and attacks with a similar angle. They to point out the "ego" in the other person and claim that they are not enlightened because of it. Let's look at God's play closely: Detachment is denying one's direct experience while integration is merging with it. One results in crystallization of the ego as the "guru" while the other results in consciousness flowing freely. I'm only sharing this because i think its a trap that could easily cost someone a decades stuck with in the spiritual path. Here's a story I remember as told by Alan Watts in "The Way of Zen": One day a monk in a monastery finds a fellow who is crying in anguish. Such behavior as you might know, is highly uncommon in Zen monastic life where people are taught complete mindfulness and detachment from their behavior and emotions. Seeing the fellow in tears, a monk approaches him and says "What has become of you? What is the reason for your tears?" the man replies that his mother has passed away and that he is crying because he is sad. The monk then says that he is a disgrace and that such behavior is only for the ignorant. "After all, don't you know that in truth you never had any mother to lose?" The grieving man then raises his head and says: "Do not be an idiot. I'm crying because I want to." The first monk then experienced his Satori and awakens. In the story, the monk was the detached "guru". He became a guru, because consciousness crystallized around the concept of detachment. Instead of using detachment as a tool to find his true nature, he instead clenched his heart and bound himself to the notion of invincibility. In effect he hypnotized himself to believe he is an imperceptible being who is other than his direct experience. In other words, he failed to see his true nature, that his experience, whatever it may be, is God. Instead he made his teaching into yet another veil, denying whats before his eyes, believing in a shadowy void that he thought was his real being. The grieving man instead WAS consciousness. He didn't create a second mind, ever watchful over his feelings and emotions, and so he was enlightened, perhaps not even knowing it himself. But even if he did, crying would not get in the way of enlightenment. Of course, the "ignorant" monk himself is not separate from God either, but his inner experience could not have been one of peace, freedom, and flow - because he resisted.

@winterknight Very well, then operating with that framework, the experience could be described as paying attention without losing sight of the truth. Whereas before one would say, "this body is me, it is I, let me do the work with it", it is now "I am that I am. What ever i intend happens". The mind may or may not be involve. The important thing is that the Self is never lost sight, despite the functioning, intending, etc etc. When I say intention, do not mistake it with intention as made by the mind. The process is wholly mysterious to the mind. The mind may sometimes take advantage of this power for its own purposes, but mostly it is silent. The important thing to stress is that whether the mind is active or quiet, the Self is not hidden.

Maybe this isn't the exact place to post this, but I just want to share a piece of news I read today and invite a discussion. This doesn't involve enlightenment per se, but I want to demonstrate just how utterly dysfunctional society's morals, ethics, laws, and sense of justice can be. I won't mention names or places, just the story itself. The oldest debtor of [REDACTED] state prison has been released after 20 years of imprisonment. So this person, let's call them A, has been in prison for 20 years. They went inside at the age of 47 when their tissue manufacturing company went bankrupt and they were unable to pay their debts. They came out at the age of 67. Their family was unable to pay back their debt in the mean time, and no social organization could help either. Only after an unnamed charitable individual decided to help them could they manage to be released. Now let me tell you how much money they owed: $14,500. Yes, you read that right. 5 figures. Less than 20k. What moral code, what system of values equates 20 years of someone's life to that much money? But more importantly, how to fix this? I'm genuinely interested in people's opinions on solutions? What kind of restructuring do you think can help us avoid tragedies like this in the future? Anything goes. I just want to hear people talk about this stuff.

@winterknight Let's clear something up first about your direct experience, which of the following do you mean? A. The world disappears in the sense that what is "perceived" itself changes "quality". B. The thoughts about the world, which is really the self, quiet down and so the world is revealed to be the "Self" (if we choose to call it by that name)?

@winterknight May I humbly ask you to watch this video when you have time? I think this video nicely demonstrates how doership, the mind and the world are not obstacles to enlightenment or bliss or what have you, in the context of hinduism. From my direct experience, i cannot phrase it better than saying that the mind, the world, and doing are not separate from God.

@winterknight What does it matter if something bad happens to this body specifically? You are familiar with what Ramana told his followers who were weeping as he was about to die. "Why are you so much attached to this body? Where can I go?" In contrast how would you feel when something bad happens comes your way? The answer to both our questions is the same thing, no? Agreed. To rephrase what you said before, a quiet mind is a more of a side effect rather than an end goal. The bliss of peace is beautiful. It is phenomenal. It is indescribably exalted. It is unshakable, even unprocurable. I cannot convey it any better than saying: "there has never been ignorance to begin with." God has never forgotten itself. That whole notion of God's leela is false. but no. It is not miserable to leave such a state. Because it cannot be left to begin with. You know this. You are no longer even able to fall back into ignorance. What then is the reason to reject the world, when the world is not different from God?

@winterknight Agreed. Agreed. In my understanding, there is no discrepancy in assuming ownership of choice as long as it is not limited to the body/ego. In fact, in my own direct experience, the universe seems to respond almost immediately to my intentions. This is not to say that by simply wishing cake to manifest itself i'll be immediately fed cake (although cake in a few hours after intending is not outside the realm of possibility ) but rather that the entirety of existence feels as if it is an extension of me. Funnily enough, i believe total surrender and total subjectivity are the two sides of the same coin. Agreed and this is i feel where self-inquiry falls a little short. Not that it is so intentionally, but there is huge potential here for aspirants to vilify thoughts and as such be more concerned with attaining a quiet mind, instead of realizing. I guess it's a matter of perspective. I don't see thoughts feeding the egoic structure as long as you are aware of the danger.