Breakingthewall

The ego is truly just an adaptive survival mechanism. Every animal is perfectly adapted to its environment; things are clear and haven't changed in millennia. For a human, the jungle is society in constant flux and perpetual friction. The price is contraction and suffering, the benefit is accelerated evolution to unprecedented levels. Spirituality tells you: all of that is illusion, stop, do nothing, you already are everything. All the while, you are fed by those running on the wheel. It would be interesting to see what would happen if they had to survive without help; perhaps the illusion would seem real. Imo the real point is not "transcend" the ego but align the ego. Denying the ego is just evasion because the ego is not a mistake. Thinking that the ego is a mistake is going against the flow. .

Maybe that's what we are in essence, but our actual manifestation is an evolving being with a brutal, dynamic drive. maybe in the AI era, humans as we know them will no longer exist. The possibilities are enormous. Would be interesting to see it

Then why is he working hard? Im not saying that he's working to build a character, that's stupid in anyone, but any life without direction or purpose feels sterile. You can live without it if there is no choice but if you can you will expand yourself, evolve, help others to evolve, I think that's the nature of life.

Adyashanti has been working very hard as a teacher and writer. I think that human being always aims in a certain direction. Look at Buddha; he attained enlightenment and then founded a monastery, a school, his life had a purpose , a vector. Life is always evolutionary, never static.

True but psychological suffering still exist without story. Humans need human connection, purpose. Humans are collective beings. That's why nisgardatta becomes a teacher. Some love loneliness, same that there are autistic people, but this doesn't implies that they are enlightened

It depends, psychological suffering is just suffering. If they lock nisgardatta in a room of 2x1 for 3 years, would he suffer or not? Would be psychological suffering? If someone tortures his son in front him, he would suffer? The point not having psychological suffering by default, but many people haven't and they aren't enlightened

Exactly, ego can change but never disappear. The ego can cease to be an absolute, rigid structure defined by the social context and become flexible, capable of disconnecting at certain times. The individual is not defined by the gaze of others but by their inner impulse, yet remains an individual, a human being with a defined psychological structure. Denying this is the fundamental error of spirituality and creates confusion and closure.

Ego is an arising in the nature, not something alien to the nature

Even if the separation dissolves you are still a human, exactly than before. The difference is that you perceive the fact of being human as relative and death can be seen as a dissolution of this form in the ocean of being, but the human self still exist because it's a reality conditioned by evolution, not an illusion. Again, nisgardatta, ice cream or hammer?

But what happens when cigarettes are over? He didn't mind about it or he went to buy another packet? And why did he do those speeches and he received all the westerns spiritual seekers? If everything is the same, why doing such effort? Maybe he enjoyed being a diva? I don't know, seems bit contradictory don't you think so? Seriously, it's absolutely obvious that nisgardatta have a big ego who who loves feeling special. That doesn't mean that he wasn't enlightened. Reading him seems that he achieved total openess to the unlimited, but this has no relationship with the fact of being a human with preferences. Nisgardatta, choose: lemon ice cream or smashing your fingers with a heavy hammer? Then between those extremes, a world of nuances and preferences. Because he is a human. Lets stop believing bullshiters.

@James123 you seem like stressed, keep calm.

Agree, understanding is the key of freedom

For me, stupidity is the attitude of prioritizing your emotional needs over the facts. It's something that happens at some basic mental foundation, and then you build an entire edifice of stupidity upon it. You can't go back because it would mean the destruction of your entire psychological structure, and you don't dare do that. Therefore, you reinforce your stupidity and become a complete stupid . It's very common. When the stupid is old it's dramatic.

That speech is full of mistakes. He says that the person who worries, who searches, etc., is a habit, an idea you create. It's not like that; it's a social psychological structure created by evolution, and it's real. If you consider the ego false, you'll never get out of it. The point isn't to deny the self but to break its limits. Nisgardatta is still a self with preferences. He kept smoking and giving lectures. Maybe he enjoyed doing it, right? Then why trying to appear detached and special? The Enlightenment thing is simple: stay in the "I am," as he says, until "I" and "am" are one, until there is no subject and object, no awareness of being aware, but rather unlimited absolute being. Then totality opens up. After that, you don't need to say you're not human and that everything is imaginary to confuse people and appear special.

If you are open to your true nature your behavior changes because the true reality of being a human start to reveal itself little by little. You stop being something that needs to be filled, then you stop addictions and behavior born from lack and you perceive yourself as expansive reality in human form.

It's not a belief system; it's the direct fact of being. It seems the previous text was too complicated and you didn't understand it, that's why you wrote again a condescending nonsense. Let's look at this: YOU ARE. YOU KNOW THAT YOU ARE BECAUSE YOU ARE THE FACT OF BEING CONSCIOUS OF BEING. THERE IS NOTHING MORE TO KNOW. THEREFORE, YOU KNOW EVERYTHING It's simple enough? Then, as you are and the reality is, then the reality and you are not different. Where is the problem? Remove everything until absolute being remains, and that s it. It's not like understanding quantum physics, it's quite simple. Or if you prefer (to avoid the forbidden "you"): the fact of being is what appears as "you" in the form of a conscious mind. The fact of being is absolute because the fact of non being is not a fact, is nothing, nothing is not. Being is.

In our society, we are educated from birth to be consumers; we are receivers of objects, content, and experiences that we like and find entertaining, and we perceive our value within the human group by whether we are liked and validated. From adolescence onward, being liked and validated becomes key. We crave an ideal of beauty, wealth, and social skills that places us at the top of the pyramid, allowing us to enter the "fit" zone, and we see others as allies or adversaries depending on their level of fitness. Sex is presented to us from childhood as consumption. By age 12, we watch an amount of porn that would leave the Marquis de Sade perplexed, and if you are more or less "fit," random sporadic sex is within anyone's reach. It is absolutely natural to perceive sex and life in general as an act of consumption, not of expansion. I am not talking about selfishness, expansion is also selfish, i am talking about the vector. The vector created within us by our society points inward. The consumer is a pit that must be filled. This poses a serious problem: it closes us off. We have become isolated, self-reflective bubbles that need validation from their peers and seek pleasurable, satisfying experiences. These bubbles are always in a state of lack. They cannot be filled; they can only reach a level where the anxiety of insufficiency isn't overly noticeable. The problem with this is that it makes us idiots. We only see the reflection of our character, like a wall right in front of our face, flat and made of anxiety. This persona must be improved so that we can receive more of the good things we want. We all know where this leads: to a medicated society. Children born to fill a void, who will be raised by neurotics riddled with anxiety. This is an interesting labyrinth. At a given moment, you are a teenager caught up in this mess that is impossible to understand, surrounded by alienation, and you create a character .Real values like loyalty, honor, courage, surrender, and integrity sound great in movies, thousands of which we consume, providing us with engineered emotions that substitute for the honor, courage, surrender, and integrity that are scarce or nonexistent in our consumer reality. This makes us absolutely idiotic; we are so idiotic it is brutal. We are trapped in a bubble of idiocy. Escaping it is a challenge of enormous difficulty. It requires changing our vector of existence, the direction in which we point. Changing from a pit to a source, from a consumer to an expanding being. The point we are at is the consequence of humanity's massive conquest of reality. Seriously imagine for a moment, right now, being teleported to London in 1750. Seriously. We don't want that. But the enormous change that has occurred has made us neurotic, alienated, and closed off. This is endured more or less well thanks to the massive consumer possibilities we have, and the projection toward a future where we will be complete. But beware. Be very careful. Any day now you could realize that your life is an absolute misery, that you are absolutely alone in the wheel, running like a medicated rat. Making the movement toward openness is essential; it is the only sensible option. In doing so, you flip the bubble inside out, and suddenly, reality opens up. Your heart opens, your mind opens, and the vector has changed. No longer do you have the image of a progressing, remembering persona in front of you, but the immensity of reality. In front of your face is unlimited all the time; here and now you are, within the unfathomable unlimited that lives. In fact, you are that. It is not a divine, mystical realization; it is reality right now. The mental bubble ceases, as it is absolutely obvious that it is a kind of learned loop that makes no sense. Meaning is in your heart; the fact of being is everything, and you lack nothing. What you want is not to consume, but to expand, to flow, to connect. Everything is clear, clean, and alive. You have flipped the bubble inside out. Congratulations, you have solved the labyrinth of idiocy. Now, another phase of the game begins.

It depends of how you describe it. It's just a matter of psychological closure. Some descriptions are restrictive, while others allow for openness. If your conceptual framework is: reality is, this allows for openness because it doesn't imply any boundaries; there's no opposite left out. "Non-being" isn't restrictive. But if your frame it's: reality is nothing, then you're closed off because this idea excludes its opposite, something. What's something? Just any manifestation. Manifestation appears, then how could be "nothing"? According non duality because really they are nothing but they appear something. That's only a way of labelling what appears. The goal is not that but allow the total openess of the focus to the absolute being. The fact of being itself, without any restriction or label, absolutely naked of anything except the actual fact that is now without any limitations. Naming it is irrelevant, the point is being it now. You are that now, exactly here and not the absolute being is. That's obvious right? But the point is being totally open to this fact, this is the reality, to be open to this fact the separation between subject and object must disappear, being open means "being", you have to be the absolute without restrictions now. It's the same how you name it, but some labels create separation.

Why should be ownership? there is not an owner there is a process happening, and what you are is the process that involves knowledge of being. There in not "someone" knowing that is, but knowledge of being is happening and this knowledge is the self itself. A self always is the fact of knowing of being. If you are in coma you still exist, but there is not knowledge of being, then there is not self. If you awake from coma there is knowledge of being, even you awake mentally retarded without memory and only capable of distinguish light and dark and being scared of darkness, there is knowledge of being, there is a rudimentary mind that knows that is and that feels darkness as a threat of that fact of being. Self is the same than awareness.

The problem was in getting interested in spirituality. It's a subject you don't know much about, and you start reading, watching videos, etc., and it turns out that everyone who talks about it is wrong (90%), or if they're not, but their formulation is vague and confusing, poetic, not direct. So you enter blindly into a slippery slope where it's easy to get trapped. Those ideas you mention about reality being nothing and everything being illusion are a mistake, since those ideas deny reality from within reality itself, therefore creating a loop of confusion that closes. The objective is dissolving the separation between you and the reality, achieving total openess to your ultimate nature, not knowing that reality is this or that.

That saying that the self is a misunderstanding when it's genetically encoded after millions of years of evolution, is incorrect. It is not an illusion or a mistaken thought; it is a reality. Furthermore, the very idea that the self is illusory is an idea that arises within the self.

Exactly, I see it in the same way. Will would be the drive of form, conditioned by the infinity of cause-and-effect relationships that create and condition it. Form is born and dies; it is not absolute, it is relation, and it's drive is relative, it's choice because could be one or another. What we call God, or existence, is neither born nor dies; it simply is. Therefore, its only will is to be. If your will is absolute, then it is not will, it is an absolute vector. I don't see how it could be otherwise; any other possibility implies relation, and by definition, God is that which has no opposite, the non-relative, that is to say, the absolute. Relationship are possibilities that happens in the absolute drive of being. The drive of being never started, never will finish, then it wont arrive to any place, just cycles of creation and destruction following the equation of reality that could be described as 0=1-1. (As a metaphor) I also see this in that way. Even there is no destiny our will must be aligned with the drive of reality, just because any other option is resistance. Going with the flow is easy, going against it is unnecessary friction. Not smart option.

Will implies choice, drive implies inevitability. If there is choice there is an entity that make decisions, if there is drive there is absolute direction that happens because there are not restrictions or limits

You could say that the drive of reality is positive in the sense that it is, it exists. It has a positive vector, direction: being. That's absolute, without opposite.

Then it wouldn't be God as we use to define it, it would be blind power that happens, and reality wouldn't be a dream in the mind of God but the manifestation of this power. I think it's very different