Breakingthewall

The issue isn't my personal view, but rather what aligns with reality and what deviates from it. The structures the mind creates are as real as anything else that appears in reality. To deny this is to establish an impossible duality: on one hand, reality; on the other, the mind. This would imply that the mind isn't in reality. Where is it, then?

@Someone here @Someone here Notice the point: I am observing my thoughts; they appear without my intervention. Who is this "I" that observes? It is the separation between perceiver and perception. The movement is to dissolve that separation, to be one with what is. You say: unconscious thoughts exist? Obviously, yes. Do you think you have control over the trillions of synaptic connections necessary for a thought to occur? The same as over the processes in your liver or the Higgs field. It is reality unfolding, and you are it. Only that a particular structure has emerged, a human being, who reflects reality itself, knows, knows what he is. For this, it needs duality, and for this duality to exist, it needs self-preservation, the capacity to decide on some aspects and not others, on a minuscule percentage of what is happening in the universe of unimaginable complexity that you are. This "I" that knows what it is can set the direction, move toward openness, merge with reality, and recognize its total nature. You are an eye of the reality, but also you are the reality itself. You can open yourself to this absolutely and without doubt, then as the sufis say, the lover and the beloved are one. There is no separation and there is no limit. You will see the glory. If you dare to jump without net of course. No handle to grab, absolutely unlimited. That is what this game is about.

@Someone here Now you're really talking. You're entering the realm of true meditation. As you've already realized, thoughts aren't the problem, but the symptom. Thoughts don't create contraction; it's contraction that creates compulsive thinking to maintain separation, closure. Contraction is primal fear, and facing it head-on is the key. It's in your cells, in your entire vibration, in how you exist in reality. The work is to release it and open up. I'd say you have the talent for it.

That's not how it is. Words evoke realities in the mind of the listener. They also bind minds, and they can set them free. Words are structures that reality adopts, and their power is enormous. A word can determine the destiny of humanity; it can also free you from your chains, or imprison you within them. Words are as real as stones, galaxies, or the entire universe. This spiritual notion that words are false and silence is true, calling this duality non-duality, is as foolish as saying you've enlightened a cow.

Yes he said that he asked himself without pause: who I am, etc, but in the text that I quoted he exposed an opposite idea. Ramana isn't clear, he's intentionally confusing and mysterious, when the topic is clear, direct, simple. Reading what he said seems that he was confused. He talked about reincarnation, mashamadi, he said that he enlightened a cow, or that his mother ended the wheel of incarnations. Bit weird right?

He says that the self is an illusion or a misunderstanding

The will to live is an evolutionary structure. What wants to live, lives, or has more chances; what doesn't, dies. Multiply this by trillions of generations, in which what works is selected.

Very incorrect and quite limiting for any seeker. What you are must be polished because it is a dense structure that veils the perception of your total nature. What we call enlightenment is the complete opening of your perception to your ultimate nature. If your mind is veiled by the human psychological labyrinth, it is closed. Ramana's text implies that even in a dense state, that is enlightenment because you are consciousness. Complete error. You are consciousness insofar as you are a conscious being, but being trapped in a dense structure is not the same as being open to the totality. The ultimate nature of reality is not consciousness, consciousness is the fact, the action of the reality looking to itself. In that action the reality can look some aspect, for example greed, hate, desire, fear, or can open the focus and perceive itself in its ultimate nature.

Just my perspective: The idea that everything is consciousness and reality is an illusion comes from Advaita Vedanta philosophy. It's a mistake, a subtle need for control, since from the perspective of a conscious being, unconsciousness is unimaginable, not an option. Consciousness is the fact of reality looking at itself, not reality itself. So no, stones are not conscious

Enlightenment requires total surrender. Not in the sense of doing things, practices, or actions like meditation, but a real intention to surrender. The willingness to give yourself to life, to reality, to open to it, not to block what is living through your desires and fears. To forget them, and let your only real desire be to be one with what is. Everything else, work, relationships, the person you want to be , are games. Beautiful games, full of life and passion, but not important. Nothing is important compared to the opening of your being to the total. Right now you are dancing in eternity, while fixing your gaze on the ground , on its intricate paths, its judgments, its problems. You also can lift your gaze to the sky, open your heart to what is. Give yourself to what is. Perhaps this resembles the Christian idea of faith. But not faith in an idea , faith in life. Not faith that it will be good for you, but that you are one with it. It is not that reality loves you. It is that you are reality, and everything is in you. Your eyes open and encompass 360 degrees and unfathomable depth. You are now the total abyss expressed in a dense structure that knows itself, emerging from the dance of aeons in which reality has generated patterns of unimaginable complexity, dancing upon itself. This form is an instant among infinite instants that looks and sees. It is nothing, less than infinitesimal, zero. And it is everything , the absolute totality seeing itself and rejoicing in the fact that it is. Perceiving beauty, mystery, looking at itself, recognizing itself, and in doing so overflowing into the glory of something that was lost and is found again. The one who looks and the one who is seen are one. The lover and the beloved are one. But that one is not one , it is total. It is the bottomless that sees itself. It lives because it has no bottom, and its life is total. It is. And this is everything. You can open your eyes to, let's say, the tao, because any name that you put, like infinity, absolute, love, life, universe or god is false. What is cannot be named, you can open yourself to it, because you are that.

Maybe we are talking of different things, what I mean is that the personality is not the self, the personality is how the self manifest, but not what the self is. The self is the sense of yourself. Not the sense of yourself as a woman or man or depressed or anything but the fact of being aware of yourself

The experience changes, but the self is not the experience, is the sense of yourself. The conversation with vegan awake was about if the self is real or not. He says that it isn't, I say that it's real, is a construction that happens being human that makes that you are aware of yourself. It's the fact of being conscious of yourself

In essence yes, exactly the same always. In form no, but form is permanent change, form and change are synonyms. The yes, I'm the same than when i was 12: what is, and because is is permanent change. Same than you or everything else. But we are talking about the self. The self is the sense of myself , then as a self , I was the sense of myself when I was 12 and now. The content is irrelevant, the fact is relevant

Absolutely. Anyone who's mixing relationship and sex with spiritual life is a scammer . A seducer, a narcissist and a son of a bitch. Probably he doesn't know it. That's life. Anyway, most of spiritual teachers are narcissists, and being a narcissist implies a lot of crazy toxic behavior

There is only one truth: you. You are the truth, the truth is you. Just open your eyes and see the truth. It's in your heart, it's what you are. Any limit prevents you to see yourself, the only way to see yourself is breaking all limits. Without limits, only one truth is: you

The only way to avoid lying to yourself is to not tell yourself anything.

Yes in the sense that I am the recognition of myself , and myself is what is.

The self is not an illusion; it is a biological creation as real as your penis and testicles entering a vagina and creating the miracle of life, emerging from the total and bottomless coherence of the abyss of the total, from the creator of worlds, dimensions, glory, and perfection that in themselves cry out: Hallelujah. Your self is as real as a galaxy or a universe. It is perfect synchronicity dancing upon itself, and in the infinity of infinite forms, it affirms itself, sees itself, and says: I am. Your self is the self of the total, and it can open itself to the total. And through you, the absolute abyss, the unlimited, the total, sees itself and affirms: I am. Hallelujah, because what is, is. And the absolute light of being will fill you. You are at home, there is no death, life and death are one and your heart will open itself and in it, there is everything. Alleluia friend because you are that.

Emotions are occuring in the reality, or better, the reality is taking the form of emotions.

That's a limited vision. The absolute is unlimited. If you want real awakening, you have to become unlimited. Breaking your limits. Opening yourself to the totality and be one with it. It's an action, not just a realization.

@Vladimir You've understood it perfectly. I completely identify with your initial post; I've been through that fun process of being in hell. The difference is contraction versus openness. You usually enter a contracted state out of fear: abuse in the family, rejection, hostile environments, lack of love at a crucial moment. You unconsciously shut down as a form of protection, and this leads you straight to hell: OCD, isolation, addiction, and self-hatred. The positive thing is that you realize it (if you don't end up addicted to fentanyl, of course) and begin the process of opening up, and in that process, you realize that total openness is enlightenment: the total absence of contraction. Then the real work is identifying any contraction and open it, until your reality is open, unlimited. Then you are one with the unlimited, you are exactly that.

Good point, but this doesn't mean that what appears in your pow is your creation and has not reality out of you as perceiver. This seem bit egomaniac don't you think?

Seems interesting but honestly, I'm lazy to listen 40 min. Maybe you could write here the main points that he exposed

The absence of change is equivalent to no experience because experience is the awareness of change. Manifest reality is constant change on all levels; nothing is static. Static is equivalent to non-existence; reality is never static. If you expand anything, you will reach endless vibrations. Even absolute emptiness is full of quantum fluctuations. Static doesn't exist; it's the non-existent interval between two fluctuations. Maybe you could think that if you are in deep meditation there is no change and there is experience, but there are billions of fluctuations creating that experience.

It's not constructed only by social conditioning but by biological structure. The knower exist since there is consciousness. You could say that you have transcended the social ego, but you still exist as conscious being, and this implies knowing. You know that you are.