snowyowl

Grand, in my diary. Actually I saw earlier in the thread that you had the awakening 2 years ago so feel free to tell me if it's already well integrated.

I admire that you're a rational guy who doesn't stand for waffle and nonsense even in spiritual discussions. So how about putting your mind to work getting a solid grounding in western philosophy, which goes into the different types of knowledge and truth. It might help clarify what type of truth you want, and how to approach it. You might have already got that, but it's something I found helpful in the past.

@Vladimir Thanks for your reply. I can't really dispute your claims, if I'm in a different bubble of consciousness to you. Let's just say I believe you that your bubble appears how you describe it; you seem to be happy with your awakening and if it's not hurting anyone else I'm not criticising. How about we bookmark this thread and revisit it in a few years to see how it integrates and pans out over time.

Yes it seems that way. The universe may be one Consciousness, but it's divided up into fragments some of which 'get it', and most don't. A Self-aware wave is still only a wave. So are we saying that the ocean as a whole isn't Self-aware and there's borders between awakened and non-awakened parts of it? In that case awakened people don't have omniscience, aren't aware of the consciousness of someone like me and there really are separate bubbles. For a complete awakening to occur, don't we all need to be part of it?

What I find hard to understand is how we have these experiences of nonduality, oneness or 'I am the universe' etc; then drop back into separateness with this appearance of us all being distinct bubbles of consciousness. If you really are the universe, and awakened, then you are also everyone else, and the whole universe is awake. So where's the need for saviours? Yet here I am with my problems and delusions. Are you and me the same being? If so, how come you're awake and I'm not? If you're not me, how can you be awakened?

Awesome And there's loads of women out there looking too. So it's half and half: you looking for them; and making yourself a good catch so they want you. Good luck man.

It's good to see you happy @Blackhawk Just focus on making each other happy and if you have a backlash then focus on making up. Otherwise try not to get anxious about backlashes, the anxiety will only make you more resistant to being in the now.

Well, there's lots of people who already think their religion should be the world religion (Christians, Muslims, Bahais, even atheists) but it's often done in a supremacist and imperialist way so is a big source of conflict and evil in itself. If you are thinking of a liberal non-creedal religion which respects all historical faiths there's the Unitarians (Unitarian Universalists in the USA) who're already doing that too. It sounds like you're rather giving up on the old religions to be able to educate their members in peace & order, why do you think they've failed? We need to learn what's gone wrong in the past so we don't repeat the mistakes. One possible reason is that folks can get very hung up on believing the exact correct thing, or practicing in the right way (a literalist view). And they rely too much on their scriptures as the revealed word of God, so any deviation from their version of God's word is necessarily wrong and/or evil, so feel the need to change other people to their approach. Also people conflate religion with community, meaning that the whole thing becomes tribal and there's favouritism towards members of your own religion and othering of everyone else.

Me too only talking from my own limited experience. If I knew the answer to all this I'd pack in my office job and get out there helping people with it

I'm open to that possibility, I don't know much about narcissism yet but probably need to find out. All I can say for sure is that certain situations result in physical symptoms of anxiety which have a disabling effect on my behaviour, such as my ability to engage in conversation and generally open up, because I'm in a state of fff (fight-flight-freeze response). It's completely subconscious so I'm not in control, I can't just switch it on or off. Although not nearly as bad now as it used to be, hence my recovery, although in reality it's only a partial recovery. Why am I like that? I can't remember any particular childhood trauma apart from perhaps a lack of parental presence (my parents did love me but were often absent having careers and then got divorced). Then there could be a genetic component, my dad suffered something similar as far as I can discover. But perhaps there is some narcissism passed on too, I'll have to look into that.

In my case (and after following @Blackhawk's threads over several years now, perhaps him too), I put the underlying cause down to social anxiety. Being stuck between the devil of inner loneliness and the deep blue sea of fear of social interaction. It's painful to be lonely but there's also a safety in being alone, compared with the anxiety of socialising. The horns of that dilemma create a stalemate which results in depression. Or maybe anxiety isn't the original root cause, it could be something genetic or childhood trauma causing the anxiety as a symptom. It could be linked to narcissism too, I don't know much about that I'll have to read the other thread.

@Breakingthewall @Blackhawk I can in a way, agree with both of you on this one. I used to be heavily depressed too and one thing which delayed my getting useful help was a doctor literally telling me to snap out of it and sort myself out. I just wasn't ready for that approach, was too embroiled in my suffering and not strong enough to pull up my own bootstraps. It took me a few more difficult years to go back to a doctor and ask for help again, luckily that time I got someone more attuned to where I was at. Eventually, after getting help from others I got to a point where I could start to help myself. If getting wasted means getting drunk, well yeah I can relate to wanting some escape from all the pain. But I don't recommend frequent drinking, it's likely to get you more depressed in the long run.

@Blackhawk ah I see. Well I hope you have a good night. I guess I'll be staying home too, I don't have a big social life either.

Sorry you're feeling down, yeah a good night out sounds a great idea. And if you can, try and leave the negativity behind so you can have some fun in the moment. It'll make you more attractive to women too. Can't you see that all those depressing thoughts create a downbeat aura which the women around you will pick up on and put them off. There's nothing wrong with a bit of philosophy, asking questions about the meaning of life & the universe etc. But when you're feeling depressed and can't climb out of it by yourself, there's no shame in asking for some professional help.

How are you feeling today bro? If you've got suicidal thoughts like this then please forget internet forums and get straight on the phone to your local emergency suicide helpline. Best wishes man. Assuming you are feeling ok today ... "This is my belief". Are you saying this from personal experience or is it just a belief? If it's from experience then you're saying that you have experienced being most happy. In which case yes life is full of ups and downs and by that logic the time to be free from worry is when you're most unhappy because things will be on the way up. Why should that be a cause of feeling suicidal? It reminds me of the Buddhist talk about impermanence. "Every conditioned phenomenon is impermanent". Including happiness and also unhappiness. There was a time in my life years ago when I was kind of drifting and unsure what to do. But I was into Buddhism and used to see monks and visit monasteries. I was even toying with the idea of becoming a monk myself. I was talking to this monk and he was explaining how, before he ordained, he experienced emotional highs and lows, how it was a cause of disturbance and suffering. Now, after being a monk for some years practising intense meditation & mindfulness the highs & lows had subsided and he was more on an even keel, in the middle without getting involved in any dramas going on around him. He was happy like that. I thought about that a lot afterwards and decided I didn't want that kind of life, without the ups and downs, having flat emotions all day long. I wanted to find some passion even if it meant the emotional crashes too. So I didn't become a monk, and carried on looking for my passion which I did eventually find in loving a woman, having a family and a career. As well as continuing my spiritual practice. But can't say I got as enlightened as that monk though ha ha! Maybe my story is no help for you but there are choices to make around whether to jump into the river of life to find your passion or whether to try and protect yourself from the emotional volatility and avoid the drama. No judgement either way, whatever works for your happiness.

Ok yes that's my interpretation and probably not popular among mainstream Christians. But a little research (wikipedia) tells me that the Trinitarian Christian theology (and not all Christians are Trinitarian, some are Unitarian, or Arian, Socinian etc), has God in 3 persons with one essence. And I remember Alan Watts talking about the etymology of "person" as deriving from the old Greek theatrical tradition of the actors wearing masks through which they expressed their characters. One essential actor wearing many masks to be different people. So why shouldn't God be a kind of shape-shifter. I think Leo's had a video about shape-shifters, the problem with Christianity IMO is that it doesn't go far enough: if it said that ALL forms are the same essence then it would be onto something. Islam has 99 attributes of God, I don't get why you're making such a big issue out of person rather than attribute.

My take on the trinity (& I'm not a Christian btw) is to make an analogy with us humans. I am one person, a single unit, but I sometimes think of myself as body/mind/soul. In the symbology of Christianity; body = Jesus, mind = God the Father and soul = Holy Spirit. I think what was unusual (but not unique) about Jesus was that he realised the unity underlying the apparent difference between himself, God and Spirit. Saying "I am God" is only heretical if you haven't had this realisation and believe in real separation. Also note that Judaism and Islam both originated as polytheistic religions - Jehovah and Allah were originally part of pagan pantheons - so Trinitarianism isn't so strange in the ancient religious landscape.

Have you had experience of being bullied when you stand up for yourself, rather than going beta male and submissive? I'm curious because the usual wisdom is to stand up to bullies so that they respect you. Otherwise you'll become a tool in their competitive game with each other. It does seem that self-respect and respect from others are intertwined, as long as you're afraid of other people it'll impact on your own feeling of self-worth. But I know it's really hard, I have anxiety too and my instincts are for avoidance of a difficult situation rather than facing up to it.

Sorry to hear you're feeling rough, I kinda guessed it's not a literal rant but the feeling comes over though. Maybe it would help to share what's going on. There's a plus side to being expendable, it allows you more freedom to create your own life purpose if nature doesn't dictate it for you.

Me too, and it's worth considering that, although these thought loops are a symptom of the disorder, the root cause can be hard wired into the neural pathways and networks of our brains. Which can be created by all sorts of events going back to childhood and even by our DNA. We may get frustrated by finding it hard to change negative thought patterns, which in theory should be easy enough to change, but there's brain structures driving them so it takes time, patience, self-forgiveness and above all practice to make inroads into our brain's neuro-plasticity and achieve lasting change. By the way @Blackhawk it's not clear to me what you're asking for in this thread. Do you want advice and suggestions (I know previously you've not wanted those), or are you just venting and wanting us to listen and empathise?

Out of interest, what type of church are you referring to here? There's a lot of diversity out there, not all have such a judgemental culture. But it depends where you live I guess. Sounds amazing, why not go there instead of the church?

Experience? If it's really experienced then how do you judge that moment as illusory rather than anything else? I've already mentioned about an apparent directionality of awareness. I'm beginning to think that the idea of myself / yourself is based on the attention of focussed awareness pointing in one direction or another. It's an energy (for want of a better word) which takes on forms, but doesn't become split up and separated into me and you. In fact, I can't observe it pointing to myself and another person simultaneously, rather it (the same singular energy) seems to oscillate at high speed between pointing inwards (me) and outwards (someone or something else). But this is still a contemplative work in progress - by the unreal me

I know what you mean, it's a bit tricky to define the difference. But suffering is like when the experiences are happening to someone, who doesn't want them, labels them as unpleasant, and seeks/desires to stop them in the future. So it's related to the seeker in spirituality too. To use the desert mirage analogy, if I'm in the desert and thirsty, the thirst is a real feeling. "I" don't like being thirsty so I start seeking water, hoping to find some. Real too is the sight of the mirage, but I create a story around it that it is water and my hopes are raised, only to be dashed when I discover it isn't water after all. Suffering is because my story and hope is destroyed so I'm left with what I don't like. However the feeling of thirst remains as it was before. This is what I'm contemplating. We seem to agree that the separate self doesn't exist though the illusion of the separate self does exist (for some of us). What is 'the illusion of self' made of? There's a story going on within thought, but it's very persistent and is it based on anything other than thoughts begetting thoughts? As I'm contemplating it now, it seems that my sense-perception (sight, sound etc) has this quality of coming in from outside the body, called objects. Other perceptions (thoughts, feelings etc) seem to be generated inside the body, called the subject. Is that distinction perhaps a layer of thought on top of the pure perception? The belief that 'inside the body' is separate from 'outside the body' is arbitrary but in a way necessary to provide for survival of what's assumed to be separate.

@VeganAwake @Mason Riggle ok I get that there never was a separate self to begin with, just an idea of separateness, yet there was still suffering. I'm not getting the impression from you that suffering stops altogether with awakening, but maybe there's a reduction as the raw feelings aren't layered over with the extra sense of a subject having the experience. The odd thing is, that the self which you insist is illusory, can yet still produce real feelings of the extra suffering layer. An illusion creating reality?

@VeganAwake Just to be clear, ideas like radio waves, subconscious mind, ultrasound etc are just models, maps, rather than being real in themselves. But helpful in the relative world. Are you saying that awakening has ended suffering for you? Or does suffering still occur, just without an individual to have it? A reply to this type of question from Buddhists runs along the lines of, the body still feels physical pain but there's not the added layer of suffering caused by ego-resistance. I'm interested in your experience of awakening, are you happier now post-awakening?