Preetom

@Outer Thank you

Sounds reasonable. May I know how you are undertaking this journey? What techniques/formulas would you recommend if someone decided to take full responsibility and start this journey?

Interesting. Is this journey towards no thought/awakening voluntary or involuntary? Is an individual in complete control about how much he wanna move forward and how slowly/quickly? Or is it something that is out of his control and all he can do is to wait and see how things progress?

So would you consider that 'absolutely no thought' is the final enlightenment? Is that something even possible? Or is there nothing called a finishing line..just more and more degrees of no thought/awakening?

@Outer Are you enlightened? (this isn't a trick question. Just curious)

1) https://youtu.be/Oq4NDMNDzSs 2) https://youtu.be/ZTJn9ysm_gM

As I was doing a combination of self inquiry and mindfulness with labeling, I came to a direct realization that what I call 'me' is just a combination of experiences(Mostly subtle inner feelings)...just groundless, hollow experiences. What I thought as alive turned out to be another experience when I inquired sincerely. Right that moment I realized what I call 'me' is just inert, dead, meaningless objects/experiences. What I thought I was, is already dead. In other words, it was never alive. Then the realization came that Life and Death both are mental constructs. Life, Death these are just empty words which really doesn't point to anything real. Just like a thought, these are more concepts.

aye!

that makes sense. I guess that's the Absolute!

Exactly! I think I got confused as we understand the same words like self, whole in different meanings. Anyway what I really wanna convey is that we can't know for sure what realization will happen when by thinking after meditation sessions . The only valid path is honest observation and the insights will come on their own accord.

I have no idea. Its just silence without any discrimination. even the thought 'I am observing' is also gone. I think this is the state I need to familiarize myself more and more until a irreversible breakthrough occurs. That's not how I do self inquiry. I tend to release all sorts of notions about ego/whole/nothingness/enlightenment etc. I just observe my direct experience and I consider every single movement of perception, thoughts and ideas as experience. I think its helpful to let go of these notions if you wanna keep up the observation. Or else the all theories about ego,enlightenment etc keeps creating more thoughts and expectations which easily can lead to frustration. That sounds like an obsession with the physical body to me. I mean I feel boundless sometimes and why should I bother myself about this limited body? I feel like the only reason we have a physical body is to transcend it, not to make it a permanent abode. thank you

@tsuki Thanks for sharing your realizations. So much to look forward to..yet its all here

I honestly don't grasp what you are trying to convey. All I saw was that what I knew as reality/me is just a bunch of experiences glued together. When I sincerely looked at an experience, nothing called 'life' was found in there. No matter how subtle or intense or quick that experience was. Whatever I pointed to was yet another experience, there is nothing called 'me' which is alive. And when 'life' does not make any sense empirically, 'Death' does not either. If you now ask what is the 'experiencer' if everything is experience? I would say I have no idea what that experiencer is. Whatever idea I have about that experiencer is yet another experience. All I feel is that I exist. But I don't know what it is that exists. Even that feeling of existing is another subtle experience. mind=fucked

For me, it started as an escape. Developed as collecting interesting ideas and rationalizing myself with delusion. Until... Reality as I knew it started slowly collapsing and I literally started feeling like a rabbit caught in the jaws of a lion. That was the moment I realized, "oh shit I got caught!"

Yes. Thought always says it's telling truth. But when observed, its just another experience with added story

that which does not have a distinct reality. All experiences. My true self which can't be communicated. Then again.. The distinction between "real" and "unreal" is an illusion Like Nisargadatta Maharaj said, these cock and bull stories are provided until the truth is realized

Try this

@Charlotte I would recommend reading Leo's practical guide to enlightenment again whenever you feel the need for more clarification about self inquiry. If you read that article once a month I can pretty much guarantee you'll end up finding new deep pointers everytime and think to yourself, ''How could I have missed this important point before?''

You've totally missed the point of self inquiry. The whole point of self inquiry is to keep you looking/observing until you break free from delusion. What you call 'me', 'reality' are layers of stories glued together. They can only sustain if they are unexamined/unobserved. The moment you look, shit start disappearing like empty air. Doesn't that ring some bell? maybe you and your whole life stories and constructs are just a house of cards. What is the purpose of Self-inquiry? Its to deconstruct yourself, your beliefs about being a human/alien/nothingness and your world. Observation is the only direct spiritual practice and self inquiry is just a technique to keep you oriented and focused. There are other techniques like spiritual autolysis, mindfulness with labeling, Guided Neti Neti, staying with the I AM etc which basically facilitates the same observation with slightly different spin. Until?? Until all that can be deconstructed is deconstructed. And what is left? That which is Real. The unreal never existed and the real can't be destroyed.

Because Jesus/God/Reality allows him to appear as arrogant

Sounds worth looking into. Thanks!

@Faceless Thanks for the reply. But don't you think such enlightened action is a byproduct of enlightenment, not something that can be practiced/done separately? For example, belching is the byproduct of eating tummy full and eradicating hunger. You can't/don't have to practice belching beforehand. After a good meal, you may automatically belch. Suppose a hungry person sees someone eating food and then belching. Now if that hungry guy thinks to himself that trying to belch over and over again on his empty stomach will eradicate his hunger then we can all agree that he is deluded and deserves pity. (this is an example from a Jed Mckenna book) Aren't we doing the same thing? We see unconditional love, compassion, dispassion, trans-morality etc. traits of enlightened beings(which they acquired or got used to as a package simultaneously with Truth realization) and we think that we can separately practice these non conceptual things while we are in the deluded state. All we got now is the burden of mental concepts of unconditional love, compassion, non doership etc. Then we judge and beat ourselves up when we can't measure up to that Enlightened scale. It is impossible to measure up to that scale. These qualities are automatic response of the enlightened beings.

So how is enlightened action or non doership possible?

That IS the true meaning of Enlightenment...until various people started selling various packages under the same name 'Enlightenment'. Too bad to see how much of an empty shell this word has become.

People tend to mean a thousand different stuff by the word Enlightenment. No wonder the whole spirituality business is messy af.