Preetom

@winterknight What is the distinction between impossibility and potentiality? Like, the notion of a 'square circle'. Is it potential in the Unmanifested Absolute, or is it just flat out impossible? or is it just contradiction of arbitrary terms?

seek yourself. leave the rest and save yourself a world of trouble

All the best

It couldn't be more precise, interesting, practical and holistic! I feel that only 2-3 Enlightenment books of this caliber is all that's necessary to sift through all the confusion and restlessness in common spiritual parlance today. In this book, one of the cleanest instruction on Self-inquiry I ever came across is provided without ever mentioning ''who am I?'' once, revealing the simplicity and directness of this beautiful method which most people misunderstand, misinterpret, overcomplicate and finally reject the whole thing as hopeless. Thanks @winterknight for writing this book and leaving a clue behind

@Shanmugam What do you refer as God now?

well have you found that Mr. doer? I'm intellectually convinced that the 'I' is totally redundant, it never really serves a function. except for maybe providing ego gratification and the subsequent suffering that comes with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Bulls

Exactly! When you don't expect too much phenomenal extraordinary stuff, you won't get them(probably). What you desperately expect, you get. In many bhakti traditions, the seeker urges on to 'see' God as some sort of objective avatar in front of them. Many go Schizophrenic and downright nuts! They visualize on the form so much that they may get a glimpse 10-20 years down the road. But hey, it's their obsessive concentration on a form that materialized that form. It's because there is no objective reality and whatever you deeply focus on, you get. It's almost like 'mad' people on the street who are so obsessed with their internal dialog that they are unconsciously verbalizing it out loud as well. These things sure are very wacky and powerful phenomenal experience. Is that Enlightenment? Not until that craving to form dissolves and you let go totally.

That's a paradox. The moment you take the stance as awareness, you're basically Enlightened(which you can 'do'/be right now) But our habitual mental-emotional reactions won't let us stay there for long and we're back to identifying with some thought form or object. When nothing takes you away ever again, that's permanent Enlightenment. But the funny thing is, when you really take the position of Awareness right now, there is no question of time or being Enlightened 2-3 years down the road. If you cling to such thoughts and believe them, that means you still haven't taken the position of Awareness. So in this sense, it is both instantaneous(it can only happen now) and gradual(You need to stabilize as awareness while the residual mental-emotional patterns fade away)

Your post reminded me something from the forward of Talks with Ramana Maharshi ''Sri Ramana’s central teaching is: Self-inquiry. Instead of wanting to know this and that, seek to know the Self. Ask ‘Who am I?’ instead of asking about a hundred other things. Self-inquiry ought to be the easiest of all tasks. But it seems to be the most difficult because we have become strangers to our Self. What one has to do is simple to abide as the Self. This is the ultimate Truth. This is one’s eternal, natural, inherent state. On account of ignorance we identify ourselves with the not-I.''

@Wisebaxter yes the rule is to delve into that being more and more. It stabilizes slowly over time, as the conditioned thought-emotional reactions recede into the background.

It has many names but essentially the same thing. Self Inquiry/Being aware of being aware/Self remembering/Pure Witnessing/Resting as awareness or I AM etc. I'll link some of the most short, lucid discussions on this I've found. The last one will be a bit longer. Just keep 2 things as fundamental strategies in this process for now. 1) Nothing perceivable or conceivable can be me. I can't be an object if I'm aware of that object. Do not turn the Subject into an object that is sitting at a distance somewhere and seeing all other objects. This is super important. 2) This self-awareness practice becomes a non doing. It doesn't have to be limited to a particular meditation sitting. It can go on all day as it gets natural and you start getting a 'feel' for it. Almost like learning to ride a bicycle and finding your balance. (sorry for the late reply. I had to revisit them in order to make sure )

We listen to gurus at their ripe, matured form and fantasize what heaven they must be living. but they had to go through tremendous shift on all levels after that event. Pretty much lost all their family, old identity forever. Would anyone knowingly choose such a fate beforehand? It's almost like forcibly taking you to death-row and you don't get to have a say in it.

According to daddy Mckenna, that's one of the built-in mechanisms of Maya to prevent you from making the jail break. In this case, it would be better to inquire that if you really 'do' anything right now...where is this 'doer' that is seemingly gluing it all together?

Yes exactly. Can you refer to a thought in this issue when thought itself is invalid from the first place? I shared my thoughts on exactly this issue in this post. Take a look if you feel like it. The thing is, we never know how the body-mind will react to Truth. No particular phenomena should be treated as a standard or inherent to the actual Truth. Anything can happen! (that included nothing happening as well ) Usually most of that happens when someone has no solid intellectual background. We all worked out through that phase 3-5 years ago when some increased heartbeat during meditation would knock our balls off! exactly! that's the issue! when you finally submit to this brutal truth that ''Anything perceivable or conceivable cannot be me. Whatever I imagine or think, is not it'', you cease to obsess about phenomenal experiences that come and go; no matter how gross or subtle or fantastical is feels. Your attention keeps on relaxing and sinking into it's source, the Self. As long as you have mental positions, of course you'll experience shocks and mindfucks as those cherries pop one by one through repeated inquiry

@Shanmugam It's still shocking to see how much people still cling to things like religion and nationality in order to push some political propaganda or whatever Anyway would love to hear your thoughts about these issues as it unfolds, maybe as a journaling or hypotheses writing in your blog or somewhere.

haha yes. Same thing happened with Ramana Maharshi. They got enlightenment on their very first trial at self inquiry. But I also think, many people misunderstand Tolle. Living in the present moment is really not an exercise one can 'do'. In his case, he was already enlightened and nowhere to go but in the present moment lol. I recently reread the power of now and A new Earth. He continuously instructs to dis-identify from all thoughts and form identities and remain as the pure witnessing presence. Really, that's the essence of self-inquiry. But people seem to misunderstand because there are also many new age notions and speculations all glued together to answer intellectual questions and complete a 'book'. The diamond eventually seems to get lost in the pile of hay and then people complain about the hay, not seeing the diamond clearly..

Do you have a certain notion or expectation about what a mystical experience might be? Have you pondered about it in details..preferably by writing it? Is it possible that you heard about a 'bull' but after all the chasing, it turns out to be a duck or something else How would you respond to that?

@Shanmugam Do you have any plans about making any blog post about him?

That's actually a sign of progress really. It really means that you no longer have those superficial, newbie, egoic notions about Enlightenment. At first, the ego fantasized Enlightenment and chases it...it is only a re-branding of it's habitual material or psychological search for security. Then one by one, those cheeries pops and really you start to see that there really is no fantastical 'thing' out there to see or become but just the total opposite. So it's simultaneously is a sign of progress but it also can make the ego bum out and backfire badly

Thats awesome. I really feel that at the center of each of our automatic unconscious reaction, there lies a hidden belief/assumption just like a virus. If one only addresses and obsess over the 'symptoms', the virus still stays safely intact. Thats why attentive writing really helps to break things down and follow the superficial symptoms to it's root. Its more like Enlightenment is already continuously happening 24/7. But the psyche has built and sustains an entire network to hide and deny this. Whenever, that being is intuited/'touched', that entire structure feels vulnerable and produces an automatic kneejerk reaction. Exactly like if there was a cockroach on your back for 5 minutes but you weren't aware. The moment you do get aware, you jump for no reason. The cockroach was already there. No new event took place...

Yeah there are cases like that as well. Suzuki Roshi was such an example. Once his students asked him why he never talks about his own enlightenment experience. His wife stood up from the back and replied, ''Because he never had one''. Really the reaction of body-mind towards Clear seeing/Enlightenment varies a lot from person to person. That's why no specific phenomenal experience should be taken as some sort of standard or inherent in Enlightenment.

Have you tried daily journaling? Just setting 30 minutes everyday and writing your recurring thoughts/issues/beliefs. Putting light on them, writing them down, break it into parts and maybe apply 'the work' on each statements? I've found writing helpful especially if something is recurring as a sticking point. Far more effective than just meditating or trying to think/rationalize yourself around it. Who is it exactly, that is having these recurring panic modes? what message is it trying to convey? what am I defending here really? where exactly is this pain sticking/hitting finally?

The irony is, Total Enlightenment probably won't happen unless and until we work through our most rigid psychological sticking points. That's why intellectual, psychological, emotional understanding and mastery is required to a degree. Yeah there are cases of sudden Enlightenment one in a million. But even then, those people are basically crippled for the next 2-5 years because their body-mind needs to go into complete hermit mode in order to make sense of and adjust according to this new mode of Being (Example: Ramana Maharshi, Eckhart Tolle etc) In other words, you can't bypass legit psychological and emotional work. You either work through them before Enlightenment and the ride from there will be comparatively smoother. Or you get hit by Enlightenment outta nowhere(almost no chance of happening) with all your neuroses still intact. In that case, you'd be working through that and you'd probably have no control over the body-mind. Thus most of these sudden Enlightenment stories shows dramatic and unbelievable circumstances afterwards like going in total seclusion or going homeless for 2-5 years..until you start making sense of things.

@Wisebaxter Hope you ponder over this following possibility as well. During a mystical experience, the mind is more or less shocked and 'absent'. Just like a fish out of water, the mind is completely thrown out of it's known paradigms during these experiences. It either shuts down completely and/or keeps shouting HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT WHATS HAPPENING in the back (you might not even notice due to the magnificence of that mystical moment). So basically the mind was not there in it's regular form. Then what happens? You come back to everyday life. The mind comes back again and solidifies it's foundations again. Then what does the mind do? It rejects/falsifies or labels that 'event' as insignificant or worse..it never happened or it was a daydream. Just because the mind wasn't there to understand the 'event' on it's own terms, it rejects it. I'm pretty sure you've already had mild to moderate multiple mystical experiences. But the duration is always a few seconds to minutes unless we become constantly aware expert meditators. That's why most of the time, you simply 'forget' it. Notice that the mind plays this same trick with deep sleep. During sleep, it wasn't present. When it wakes up, it labels the event as insignificant and not worth pondering upon. Same thing with dreams. It denies the majestic mystery that lies in dreams which shatters all conventional notions of reality flat out every night. But the waking state mind constantly rejects them or label them as insignificant just because it can't explain it in it's own terms and logic. It puts a label on them called 'just a dream' and pretends that it has cracked the entire structure of dreams. That's what the mind does 24/7. It ACTUALLY believes that by sticking labels on things, it really understands that thing and no more mystery is left there. Maybe that's why psychedelics are advocated. Instead of few moments of initial glimpses, you get a span of 1-4 hours of constant Being mode..something you can't just reject flat out. This right here shows that you're on the right track. A mystical experience doesn't have to be big emotional orgasm or some sort of deep release. The mind would love such an event because then it could remember it, label it, make stories around it, exhibit it as a trophy to others etc. These body-mind reactional events are not inherent in Enlightenment. They are the reaction towards clear seeing. The deepest mystical experiences you'll ever have are those you might not even remember because there was only BEING and no object and distinctions(what is there to remember? You can't remember being, you only remember phenomena). You might have already had such deep mystical experiences varying from miliseconds to few moments, but the mind is rejecting all that now. So the bottom line is, don't let the mind(conventional lines of thinking) make judgments about your state of Consciousness/progress. How can it comment on such a thing when it itself wasn't there at that moment? Why not invite more and more of that Being in your life, moment to moment? The deeper you go, the more silent and obvious it starts to get.