Preetom

Nothing happens without the force of God! May the force be with you.

from light to darkness to light to darkness...

lol Good boy needs to go back to those glory days. Does Good boy have another championship reign in him left?

Sad lyf

those are some great values to live up to. The road less taken will always be harder. In the end, it's gonna take more time and effort to figure this out. So be easy on yourself and slowly start implementing your master strategy. All the best!

whatever the headless man wanna call it

this line of thinking is actually like putting the cart before the horse. You gotta realize that this project called 'Enlightenment' is not like a business project that you can visualize, predict and track into next 5, 10, 20, 30 years. This kind of nauseous thinking is actually draining a lot of energy outta your life and creating unnecessary frictions in your life. You are conflating the relative with the absolute and you are demanding an answer that will satisfy this hungry thought before making any move. What enlightenment can or cannot do is something very very far down the line and usually a trap before getting enlightened. I have no idea if that was something good or bad

You gotta look at what you're calling selfish or not at first. This type of statement shows lack of scrutiny. Each and every act we do, however altruistic they are, are 100% for our own sake aka totally selfish acts. Acknowledge that first. You think helping the world is an unselfish act, but you'll go mad if you don't pursue this project. You are doing this so called unselfish act to stay sane. So whose agenda are you fulfilling? There is no shame in acknowledging that. Actually it is more aligned with Reality of non-dual Self. There is no other to help or to work for. Seeing and acknowledging this will already bring you more clarity and decrease the false pretense and our habitual lying. I read in a book that Abraham Lincoln once saved a little pig from a hole. From doing that, his hands, clothes and shoes got dirty. People asked him why he did such a petty, insignificant thing in spite of being the president. He replied that he didn't do it for the pig. He did it for himself as he couldn't bear the sight of the little pig struggling. He did for his own peace of mind. This is actually what the state of affairs is. All that being said, are you somehow guilty of still having desire to help the world? Where did these limiting beliefs come from? Just because you blasted into nothingness, is there any rule set in stone that you can't have natural inclinations to do certain things? Please don't think you've failed somehow because you have desires. Go fulfill those desires, go out and help the world. See if that deep insatiable lack you feel right now gets fulfilled or not. If it does, then great! If not, then you can think about alternatives

Good advice. what do you mean by desireless?

Being is not the ego me. Being is simply the knowledge of one's own existence as it is. ''I AM'' is Being. ''I AM a body, mind, thought so and so'' is the ego. Yup. Just that. Don't add anything else after that

What is your point?

Exactly. We are the all-powerful, limitless Self. The power of attention is the power of grace. Whatever the power of attention shines on, it flourishes. If attention is placed on 2nd and 3rd person objects(world, other people thoughts etc) , the delusion of maya and objective reality flourishes. And thus the Self gets obscured. But, If attention is placed on the 1st person aka 'I', our true Self shines and thus ignorance dies out of negligence.

'Being' is the knowledge or consciousness that you exist.

''Not attending to others aka 2nd and 3rd person objects is desirelessness. Not leaving 'I' aka the 1st person is Jnana.'' - Nan yar?

You be as you are

'Why' does 'reason' have to be the essence or main principle of life?

You're welcome. Remember, this investigation is worth it. Remind yourself this over and over again against the mind's stubbornness. If you have honestly accepted the hypothesis that you are not what you've always thought yourself to be or anything you perceive; and if you feel a genuine curiosity to look and discover yourself experientially, then please don't waste anymore time reading scriptures and texts in order to gather more spiritual 'knowledge' and models. The whole purpose of studying spiritual texts to be ignite these 2 things 1) Discrimination (knowing that you are not what you perceive. Taking that as hypothesis for your testing) 2) A genuine willingness to start looking for yourself as you are convinced why this work is important. If this is the case, then you need no more spiritual knowledge. All those will be more 'perceived' stuff which you are not. The only valuable contribution spiritual texts can provide at this stage is to motivate you to keep looking. So daily 15-30 minutes of re-reading your most favorite spiritual texts or rewatching a favorite video is a good strategy to remind yourself how things work in this investigation and strengthen your conviction.

Self deception = That which is keeping 'you' alive 'You' don't live on food and breath. 'You' live on self-deception.

A life with no desire is something that cannot be pre-formulated. You can't have an image of such a life. Whatever image we can come up with, that will be a life of desire. See how difficult and frustrating it is to accept this? The ego can't ever have the cake. it fantasizes about the cake called enlightenment but it can never eat it. The beautiful cake is there but no one to eat it.

@Applejuice You're doing great at self-inquiry so far as you are seeing that you are not even those subtle ques, thoughts, sensations. As a suggestion, all I can say is that start being more grounded at a feeling level. Take self inquiry from thoughts and intellectualization(when it goes to that realm), and bring it at tangible body-feeling level. One of the root illusion of being a separate self inside a body, that's not a thought we repeat like a mantra. That is actually a visceral feeling of being inside a body which is generally around the sensations in the chest, head and other parts. We take that solid feeling in the chest and almost always translate that sensation as 'I'. It's so primal and habitual that questioning that seems like being stupid enough to question common sense like 2+2=4. But in self inquiry, that's exactly what we need to investigate. Trace the I-feelings in the body. That I feeling is always there, attached to a gross or subtle sensation or with a cluster of sensations. This feeling of being inside a body is so irrational, so obvious and primal that mere thought arguments won't cut it. We need to honestly, courageously look at those I-feelings, over and over again, slowly, carefully, millions of times if necessary until that illusion pops once and for all. It literally is de-hypnotizing a primal brainwashing of decades. So it's gonna take at least a few years to see some light. This is really a grueling process. It feels like drowning oneself into water and voluntarily torture oneself. But patience is the key. Over time, 'you' will muster more and more capacity to withstand bullshit thrown by the mind and keep looking without flickering. The looking part and continuously being with yourself through all the mood swings, judgement and clever rationalizations is the key here. All the best. Keep that inner awareness of I-feeling continuously. And also keep noticing that you are not what you perceive (which you are already doing great so far)

Now that you've roasted everyone, hope you have chicken for the rest of the month

It is possible. That's what nirvana is

No. Thank you.

Actually this is something I've been noticing more and more. I'd zone out several times a day either in thoughts or a mood. Then suddenly when I come back, the first thought is almost always ''damn I failed at self-inquiry. I wasn't present''. Then almost immediately I notice that I am clearly aware of 2 distinct states. One is 10 minutes of daydreaming, another is coming back to concentration after that. 'I' must be present in these both states. If 'I' wasn't present, then these 2 states wouldn't have any difference whatsoever to make the contrast. Clearly I was present as much as I am present in the concentrated state. I am that pure cognition. The pure cognition that is fully present in deep sleep, which makes it possible to contrast between sleep and waking. The only issue is the recurring habitual thoughts and beliefs which treat the 'I' as a body-mind. It's like I see myself as a lion in the mirror but the recurring message is coming saying ''No dude, you are an ox!'' Should I just keep a deaf ear to these thoughts and continue to be with the 'I'?

EVERYDAY is last Thursday. Sit in meditation with that koan