Preetom

@Wyze Also you can study further about Red from the website Leo recommends http://spiraldynamicsintegral.nl/en/red/

@Wyze Bullying and abuse is definitely Stage Red taken to it's uncontrollable territory. I see the distinction between Red and Orange like this. Orange: Plays by a set of rules validated by the surroundings. Orange strives to thrive in a system by out-competing others. Or sometimes Orange will create a corollary/new system itself that goes along with present system and thrive in that. If Orange becomes too selfish, it usually corrupts the system behind the scene...scheming and plotting that usually doesn't get caught so easily. Red: Red rarely plays by the rules. Red won't hesitate to plow through others to gratify itself. If Red becomes too selfish, it manifests as direct attack, mob mentality, violence etc.

You're a cat? I thought I was talking about the cat PS: The actual moment of Enlightenment is not under your control. Every Enlightened fella acknowledges this. The best you can do, is to stay in a conceptless, dis-identified state and wait for the lightning to hit you

The cat got some existential pokes and decided to put on a sunglass and stargaze at the luminous cosmos?

Absolutely! No language can express what that ''cessation of suffering'' is like, but you surely can directly go there and live that. There is well a documented process, all worked out for last several thousands of years to undertake in this. Many people have done this over the years and came out clean from the other side. Thanks to you as well for this conversation

As long as you're questioning all 'me-ness' everywhere you find, you're doing just fine As an 80/20 rule, I can share a secret that worked superbly for me. I'm sure you have some background mindfulness all throughout the day due to your clean living and commitment to this work. The secret is this. Do not just restrict your self Inquiry practice just within that 1 hour sit (or how long you may have been doing formally). Keep doing that. But also, all throughout the day, just 'watch yourself'. Just stop taking yourself as an object. Lets say you're brushing your teeth. Your attention is constricted behind the eyes as the sense of 'me-ness'. Just gently ask ''What is it that knows this sensation? Is that also a sensation?'' and see how your attention gently relaxes and starts being aware without any rigid object right that moment. In this manner, all throughout the day, stop believing yourself as an object. If you keep this up, trust me within just few weeks you'll start feeling HEADLESS It will boost your self inquiry practice sooo much. If you can unwire ''I am this body'' belief and sensations, you've done 90% enlightenment work. You only need to stay in that conceptless aware presence. Within weeks and months, this will be automatic! You wouldn't even need to ask any question. Just your loving curious attention will melt all thoughts and constrictions on the spot and make you aware of your being. Attention turned on attention. Being aware of being aware. Totally a non doing practice once it's up and rolling! Today I did like 3 hours of Engineering maths while being aware. It becomes that effortless and I know it's only 1% The potential is unlimited! Just forget the idea that you are an object. Question any thought/belief that tries to convince you're an object. Your attention will loose all stickiness over time...just resting on itself. this 20% investment will give you the 80% of the results. All the best

You're right. You have to look through these things and find your unborn, deathless, eternal nature. Only then you're really liberated. You transcend the very idea called survival because you see you never was born in the first place! This is what I thought as well at one point. But you see, this 'liberation' is NOT a concept. You can't rationalize yourself about your suffering. You can...but that just multiplies your suffering. Real Liberation is literally a rebirth. Right now, you are having an experience of being a human limited in body with a story. With liberation, you literally will feel something new. Your very mechanism of seeing and being is transformed forever! This is why it is called the Absolute; the irrefutable over the ages! If Enlightenment was another thing that could be doubted, it would only be another stupid belief. You don't rationalize or brainwash yourself out of suffering (you can't!!). You Actually, Literally cease suffering. Now what that experience is, you have to go there and see for yourself

A breakthrough comes from this retreat like setting. You may need several of them. Or you will have to wait many years (10-12) for the witness to stabilize naturally, slowly in your daily life..until the shift happens. This is what happened to Shanmugam. Dude had his Enlightenment experience before 20, but finally the search was over in his 30s. All this time he was witnessing and slowly disidentifying. But sooner or later it is bound to happen if you really experiencially understand the objectless Consciousness state. Thats the good news!

This is exactly what I'm naming as I AM. Being aware of being aware. You're calling it PURE I. It's the same thing. Does it matter what you call it? There is not even any name in that state lol The moment you objectify the pure I AM, it's no longer the I AM. It becomes I AM 'THIS'. An object.\ The moment you say I AM is a 'thin wall', it has already become I AM THIS. You're basically calling I AM and I AM THIS the same thing. You've objectified both of them. The dilemma we're having here is a language dilemma haha

@Viking You got 2 options. 1) Traditional Self help POV (Psychological issue) 2) Real Spirituality POV (Existential, deep issue) 1) Traditional Self help POV (Psychological issue): Reading your post, it seems to me that this might be your case. You don't genuinely enjoy any responsible and so called healthy activities. But you still get a kick out of all the low consciousness addictions. If this is the case, then it's a a case of mistaken priority. Your brain is flooded will dopamine and you'll need to refrain from all stimulies for an year or so to recover. Then you'll naturally start enjoying the healthy habits and highs like studying, good diet, relationships, healthy sex, healthy entertainment once in a while etc. @bejapuskas said everything that needed to be said here. It will be a super hard challenge the 1st few months or years because you'll have to literally brute force everyday. It's like a cocain addict recovering. 2) Real Spirituality POV (Existential, deep issue) This happened to me. Along with daily so called 'healthy' stuff, the addictive stuff like binge watching entertainment, porn, food etc became like a chore and boring and disgusting and hollow as well. A realization came that even jerking off to porn is making me suffer WHILE I'm doing it, let alone afterwards lol. I was a diligent student/worker pretty much all my life. So I know the story of both worlds. I realized that neither a new disciplined identity nor the addict junky identity is giving me any joy. Like the prodigal son, I ventured in the 'the world'. But no activity, object, person, state of mind gave me any lasting joy. There was no more direction to do but yet the desire for satisfaction was burning ever vigorously. I'd pass days just lying on the bed over 15 hours, stopped eating for days because even eating felt like a chore. Through this intense suffering, a new door was opened; the last possible door. ''Who is this self that is in constant search for Happiness? What is this happiness exactly?'' A rigorous self inquiry process started and I'm still in it, ready to be thrown into the unknown forever any moment. If this story resonates with you, then realize that your current mid life crisis is actually a call to merge with God. If this is the case, no amount of transformation will satisfy this existential itch unless you see through it all the way. No cosmetic will work. You can't plaster gold on your decade long wounds and pretend that it's solved. Now honestly examine your life and see what your condition really is. Do you still believe more movies, porn or some magical object in the future will totally satisfy you? If this is the case then nothing wrong with that. Go with @bejapuskas's solid advice. There are tons of self help info on re-sculpting a new personality and value system. You can literally have a completely new healthy personality 5 years from now on if you put in the work. Or do you see that no matter what you try to become will always be another fragile garment, which has really nothing to do with you? If this is how you honestly feel, then it's time to get Enlightened! Your life will then authentically, naturally bloom from that place without 'your' control. both path will be hard! Both path demands few years of toiling labor and excruciating loneliness, confusion and pain without really seeing any tangible result. Not decide my friend

@Blissout I'm not interested in an intellectual debate here.Trust me, I've done enough intellectual research. Please just look at your experience. You're making a distinction between I AM and PURE I. But you can't tell me even one objective quality about either of them. Why is that? It is precisely because they are the one and SAME thing. Just named differently on various occasions. Why complicating things by giving the same thing many different names? Tell me something. That 'knowingness' of I AM and PURE I, are they 2 different 'Knowingness'? Are there 2 Consciouness in your experience right now? Or is it ever the same, one Consciousness? Enlightenment is discovering that there NEVER WAS anything called a separate egoic Consciousness or presonal Consciousness. It was always the Absolute; God's Infinite Consciousness. The ego illusively took ownership of that. That's the very dilemma!! By staying with that only knowingness, you discover it's Truth! Realize that what you are persistently calling PURE I, I'm calling the same thing as I AM Leo put it so beautifully,'' You've taken God and recontextualized God as you. That's the very function of devil/ego''. This Unique state, it is the final stage towards Enlightenment. Concentration practices on objects are done to still the monkey mind to a degree. Then Witnessing happens. It's just being aware of an objectless aware presence. This simple, ever present knowing of I AM. It has many many names. Let me list some for ya! 1) Practicing the presence of God in Christian mystical tradition 2) Staying as I AM by Nisargadatta Maharaj 3) Self Inquiry by Ramana Maharshi 4) Being aware of being aware by Rupert Spira 5) Resting as Awareness by Adyashanti 6) Witnessing Meditation by OSHO 7) Seeing God's Face everywhere in Sufi Traditions 8) Right Mindfulness in Buddhism 9) Self Remembering by PD Ouspensky 10) The PARVASTHA or After Effect Poise in Kriya Yoga Tradition 11) Direct Mind Experience by Richard Rose 12) The Luminous Center 13) Headlessness as promoted by our very own Faceless and Jack River 14) Neti Neti at it's Original form by Advaita Vedanta THESE ARE ALL THE ONE AND SAME THING. IT IS THE DIRECT, EFFORTLESS STATE. IT IS NOT SOMETHING YOU DO. It may seem like something you're doing at first, but upon clear seeing you find them as non-doing. They are just different names for the same things. Our goal here is not to complicate stuff but seeing the common thread that leads to Truth. Enlightenment doesn't happen from any Doing.You do the doing to still your mind and purify yourself up to a degree. The jump happens from the Non Doing (Objectless Being-Knowing) state. I am done LOL

This totally makes sense! I remember Stephen Wolinsky (Maharaj's direct student) saying in a video that Maharaj told Mulapatan(the usual translator in satsangs) that he didn't actually like the book ''I AM THAT'' as it was published. Why? Because all his answers in that book were exclusively tailored and provided to that exact questioner at his/her place at their present spiritual understanding then. But almost all readers misunderstood and took all the answers as the unchanging biblical quotes. That's why all this confusion and intellectual nit picking started . The same I AM is defined in like 100 fashions in 100 different answers. We must not forget that these answers were for that specific questioner only. They are not meant to be taken as blind faith. 1) When a spiritual newbie came to him whose mind is all the place, Maharaj would tell him to FOCUS on the thought/feeling I AM. Instead of running after thousands of objects outside, the devotee would then actively think about one object I AM and turn inwards. This is the very definition of Concentration meditation. Here you've deliberately objectified the I AM and focusing on it to still the money mind. 2) When a sufficiently matured devotee would ask him a question, he would point to the formless I AM as the pure witness that can't be objectified. He would say, stay as the I AM and let go of all things. 3) In the final stages, he would give pointers to show that this very I AM really is not personal. That personhood was an illusion from the first place! Right there, that same knowing-being is discovered as the impersonal God's Being. @Blissout Hope you see what I'm trying to convey

Oh thanks for putting it like this! Finally someone resonates ^^

Let's not see it from a narrow perspective my friend. Let's sort this out experientially! If I AM is an object you can 'focus' on, tell me from your own experience what are objective qualities of this I AM? Is it a color, a sound, a subtle sensation? Does it have a specific pinpoint location? Tell me. If you can't find any of these qualities, then why are you declaring I AM as another object? Notice that whatever you point to as I AM is not the I AM but I AM THIS. If I AM was purely an object like lets say the sensations in the head, then Maharaj would advice to firmly focus on the sensations in the head. That would be a concentration meditation. But he repeatedly said that, Subtract the THIS and THAT and only stay as the I AM. From my experience, I AM is a pure witnessing state. This I AM cannot be objectified in any way. When Maharaj says that the I AM needs to be transcended or ''In the Absolute state I don't even know that I AM'', he means that by staying as that pure subject I AM in an unbroken fashion, at one point you realize in a flash that this very 'knowiness' or I AM is not something you personally own. Right at that moment, You discover the I AM as the impersonal Universal Consciousness, the Only Consciousness there ever was and ever will be. That is the absolute state where the last vestiges of personhood is given up. That's why I AM or pure witnessing is the direct doorway to Absolute. By staying with the I AM unbrokenly, you discover it's Truth. I am elaborating all this over and over again because I find from my personal experience that creating more and more layers in the Subject or I AM just makes the witnessing process more complex and inefficient. The mind runs into intellectual land to make sense of things by objectifying the subject, witness behind witness behind witness....I hope you get my point. Why not just take only one pure subject, the formless I AM and just watch...carefully eliminating everything the I AM is not...until the I AM reveals itself as the Absolute?

Careful with that assumption. Buddha defined Enlightenment as the cessation of Suffering. Notice that he never said what it actually is, he only said what it is not. It was done so that no airy fairy cushy concept can be made around it. Same thing with the word Non-duality. 'happy ending' is an affirmative concept made by our ego. Why do we assume that Enlightenment=Happy Ending? No genuine teaching will feed that belief into an aspirant

You're right. It all boils down to this effortless Being without identifying with any object. It's the most Enlightenment conducive state. You mentioned that it takes about 45 minutes for you to go to that 'place'.It's because you're a fairly advanced meditator. Maybe in 5 years, you'll go there at 2nd minute. But in the beginning, there is identification with lots of of sticky, persistent and recurring thoughts and sensations. Only rigorous questioning unwires them just so you an reach towards Being. Consciousness becomes more and more unsticky through this process over time Just let go(when it's a random, weak object). Or else go down into brutally honest inquiry in the form of questioning and attacking it from many different angles (also writing if necessary) if it is very sticky recurring identification. My point is, you can't bypass the 'me-ness' attached with objects with clever rationalizations or suppress it. It will only make the process longer. Once your attention is unsticky, you can just be for hours and days without feeling like being stuck in a body or an object

Find out in your current experience if you're really doing anything at all or not! Just look. Where is that 'I- the doer' located? Can you find it? What are your expectations towards this 'I-the doer'? Protect my body, be a good human, memorize important stuff, make be better, make my life easier, make me happy etc? See if you're making these expectations on a real, solid thing or on some non-existent ghost

@Hellspeed What happened to Quanty? Is @Hellspeed a new being from a new dimension?

Sorry if I sounded rude but actually I'm enjoying discussing it with "the absolute truth of life", your life situations may not be changed overnight by fairy magic but the interpretations of ''struggle and brutality of survival'' sure as hell will change or just drop. Then see if your Reality changes with the change of interpretations or not!

Following that same logic, you already have a potential 'six packs' in your abs. But still, your trainer will charge you for the instruction. If a teacher truly is genuine and can seal the deal for you, then I don't see the problem of charging money. Everyone is NOT the Truth. Not until they see it for themselves. Until they see it, that's just another belief to be discarded in the trash.

Yet builds billion dollar industries and thousand years of tail chasing around it. So ridiculous and yet it couldn't be otherwise haha

So true! This pinpoint inquiry is the greatest blessing one can have

@cetus56 Just want to clarify this I AM thing further. When @Charlotte was so focused on the sensations behind the eyes because of it's convincing 'me-ness', she was not staying in the I AM. She was staying as I AM THIS (where, THIS=sensations behind the eyes. You can put any object at it's place) So this is not what Maharaj means by staying as the I AM. But when @Charlotte saw though the identification, that persistent sensation eased & she was just aware formlessly. This is what Maharaj meant as the I AM. That which remains when 'THIS' part is subtracted, is the real I AM. Enlightenment happens from staying in this I AM. I'm discussing about it because it's a very subtle mechanism and it's so easy to misinterpret it. Focusing on an object as I AM makes it I AM THIS. It will never ignite Enlightenment because it is concentration meditation. Enlightenment happens from staying in the formless I AM (also known as being aware of being aware). Knowing this, what @Blissout said about zooming out from the I AM actually didn't make sense to me experientially. I AM is not an object you can zoom in or zoom out from. It is the formless, aware presence that you notice (not as an object, you just know it's all pervading presence) when the obsessive focus and fascination with a particular object ceases. In my inquiry, I find it very useful and lot less confusing if I treat I AM as the Pure subject/witness that can't be known like an object. It immediately cuts down unnecessary goose chasing. I hope I didn't make you people more confused. I'm only trying to see if we are on the same boat experiencially or not!

@Echoes Well from personal experience I can tell you that I've wasted lots of money down the toilet and everytime the mind gave a blank check to permit it. But when it comes to Truth business, which has the potential to literally change my life, all sorts of justifications are created. Simply another distraction mechanism of the mind. Self deception at it's peak! At least the ego will take the teaching seriously if it spent some real money for it! Noone really values free stuff. The deepest and most accurate enlightenment teaching are lying all over the internet for free. You can literally read them, sit on your couch until you become Enlightened. No one gives a shit. Only after spending few thousand dollars doing satsang, mantra, tantra, yantra, some karma, dharma etc. the ego starts taking it seriously. That's obviously a scam. A real spiritual teacher is without an agenda. That's why true teachers are so rare.

@Joseph Maynor What is actually the true intention of the mind movement called 'desire'? What is it, that the mind is trying to get or hide or prove or justify through this movement? What happens when this movement is observed non judgmentally?