Preetom

To be honest letting go and inquiry complements and flows Into one another as one keeps steadily practicing. Both lead to the same destination which is effortless complete self surrender

That's why satsangs came into existence huh?

Yeah concentration meditations are needed to stabilize attention aka keeping it steadily at one place. If attention is fickle, it won't be able to remain with Awareness of its presence. But it is true that lots of attention on objects will not reveal what you are(subject). If you wanna discover anything, you must attend to it. So a good instruction is to keep stabilizing focus through concentration and keep attending to your self afterwards. The questions are redundant. They are only means to shift attention from objects to the subject.

Kisskissbangbang

@Arhattobe Thanks for the insights! But what is the tool that is used to make better decisions like feeding the intellect good conditioning? I thought intellect itself was the highest faculty that did all the reasoning and made decisions.

@Arhattobe @Aakash Also let me know how one can use his intellect from its proper place and function

That's some solid advice. Thanks. What's your personal standing on this topic before and after nirvana?

@Aakash As the drama won't stop until it's momentum is exhausted by itself, we better as well just align with it and minimize the unnecessary friction as much as possible fellas

@winterknight 1) What's the most conducive view on free will vs predetermination for a seeker? 2) What's your personal standing on this topic before and after self-realization?

Ask and ye shall receive!

Hilarious commentary to invite us back to the self

Okay I think I'm confused so I'll leave it at yes or no?

He would be already enlightened if this was actually the case lol! Ask him what he knows for sure in life and from where that knowledge came from. Basically, show him over and over again through inquiry that what he calls a rational life is actually a veneer over unquestioned assumptions and beliefs which even he wouldn't know where they came from. The work by Byron Katie can be good place to start

Love y'all!!! Doesn't 'all' include Joseph?

basically letting things be. Either painful or pleasant stuff. that allowing stabilizes and relaxes the attention. But one sure needs to be aware consistently not to get involved haha

@Shin But LEO! Can you love @Joseph Maynor?

Sounds like a chill planet to be in As Leo the man mentioned in one of his videos, ''You can measure your wealth either by how much you have in your bank account, or by the amount of free time you have to think and be''

@Wisebaxter Conventional Concentration Meditation = A subject focusing on a particular object leaving everything else alone Self-Inquiry/Contemplative Meditation = Subject turning it's attention to explore and rest in one's own presence. A total shift of interest and fascination from all objects to the subject itself. That being said, Adyashanti's 'true meditation' is really self-inquiry in it's essence. I've read his book the way of liberation and found them similar. Adya prescribes self-inquiry as well along with 'true meditation'. According to Adyashanti, In 'true meditation' it is all about surrendering all interest from the contents of experience and simply just be(self abidance). Attention slowly loose it's grip over objects and start to fall back on itself. In self-inquiry, one reaches the same place. But not through surrender but by an active effort of questioning and trying to turn attention on subject.

@Aakash You're intuition is right. You are not of this world.

(stare until agreement happens)

yes or no?

You might wanna redefine your ideas about Enlightenment. Forget about Enlightenment, take a look at it like this. It is only Awareness that knows. You life, your ENTIRE LIFE is a holographic experience projected by your own mind. There is absolutely nothing outside your own experience aka knowing. This life is known by Awareness. Unless and until you explore and discover the essence/nature of your own mind(which is Awareness), you cannot legitimately know anything in life deeply. The primal erroneous limiting beliefs about oneself aka Awareness will carry on in everything to corrupt no matter what you know or do. It's no coincidence that the greatest of thinkers, artists, humanitarians etc. ended up more and more towards the formless essence of life through their own works. It's impossible to venture into any authentic and deep avenue of life and NOT being taken over by the formless, mysterious essence of life knowingly or unknowingly. So yeah, everything is about the soup cause there is nothing but the soup

Well everyone is drowning in their own bullshit. The question is whether one is conscious of it or not

The irony is, you're not shitting in your pants. It's more like acknowledging and cleaning the gallons of shit already accumulated in the pant over decades