Preetom

@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.

If you are not aware of yourself then everything is ego trip. The answer is always DISTRACTIONS..ego's most favorite defense mechanism.

Yes absolutely. This is what I find really confusing about love cult. I have nothing against love but many people project love as something different as if it's a different reality. I mean Truth and Love are they two reality or one. It's so deceptive to talk about love because normal, deluded, ego bound people like us have layers and layers of mental concepts about love which is nothing close to absolute Love. With my limited imagination I sort of imagine that if we ever tap into that absolute Love, we wouldn't even call it love (hope that made any sense) @Faceless

@Faceless Informally it means severe criticism or reprimand. I see it as stating the truth without any bullshit and without beating around the bush

@Faceless It's been a while I've witnessed such precise Roasting of delusion. Superb replies 100/100

Yup. Thats the very function on Maya. Creating an infinite chain of meaning, name and form out of absolute nothingness. It's very function is to turn the impossible into possible (creating something out of nothing)

Thoughts are subtle objects having 2 distinct parts. 1) The actual 'feel/existence' of a thought. Either a sight or a sound. Just a neutral object only existing/being. 2) The story/meaning aspect of that thought. The part which only points towards another groundless meaning, which points towards another groundless meaning...ad infinitum. This part can be the mother of all delusion/maya

I can think of 2 approaches. 1) Take everything as a hypothesis and put an educated faith on the path and your ability to accomplish that. Just like learning physics from a course/book. You must put some faith that this book will at least teach you something which you can then use to think for yourself in this subject. You can be skeptical about Physics but if your skepticism prevents you from learning anything about Physics all of your life (because you can't trust a book/teacher/course), then you've totally missed the chance of having some understanding and maybe start thinking for yourself in that department. 2) Observation. Pure, uncontaminated, non-manipulative observation. If there is one thing we can place our 100% trust, its observation. Its the most direct, purest way of knowing/being. And the wonderful thing is there is no loss in observation. If you just sit and stare at a wall for 5 years, who knows you might even get enlightened haha

@WindInTheLeaf If you start reading Jed Mckenna books, you'll start to see that most of the 'spiritual' gurus are anti-guru. In fact they are like the last wall which you'll never pass and get enlightened

The whole ultimate point of meditation (if used for Truth seeking/Enlightenment, not for relaxation or lifestyle choice etc) is to go deeper and deeper and actually inquire and banish the shit out of the fictional story that you are repeating called 'me me me'. Then the true self will reveal itself. So yeah..in this sense meditation is THE MOST SELFISH and EGOTISTICAL action you can undertake because you are solely observing and unraveling the very self (ego) around which every moment of your life revolves and you are focusing on nothing else. And yet paradoxically true meditation is not regarded as an action in the first place.

Thanks everyone for your inputs!

"Your words and thoughts don't reflect your real values, your actions do" Please suggest me how to actually change my values. From Leo's old videos, we see that he was addicted to junk food, TV and moderately addicted to video games most of his adolescence and teenage years. How can a dopamine junkie like that be a meditating Buddha? How the values were actually changed? My current 'real' values are mostly around bodily pleasure, immediate comfort, entertainment, inaction/lethargy (though in my mind I wouldn't admit these values but my daily actions reflect these values clearly. I tend to lie to myself about self-actualizing/getting enlightened). Most of the time the body/mind acts like a mad elephant that just won't listen. It would say right on my face, "fuck your noble projects, I want immediate comfort now". You get the idea. It would be great if you guys could explain your value shifts with examples and techniques which made it possible for you. And please don't swing no self no value etc non dual theories in this thread. I'm already doing self inquiry everyday. I want practical advice for optimal functioning. Thank you.

@Max_V I'll just leave it here. Don't forget that true growth may not come in a form you've expected. Some of the deepest growth can happen behind your back when you're not thinking about growth at all! All the best in your journey.

There is nothing wrong working on the human perspective. Just don't mix the absolute perspective with a relative one. Assumptions and justifications of one perspective/state become null and void in another. And try to see the fact that the strong energy charge you are feeling right now is the very same energy those criminals tapped into to commit this heinous act. Its the same one energy/truth being expressed in infinite ways, from the most evil action to the most selfless ones. It all depends on the purification of the energy and the perspective of the expression. The best course of action would be to ask yourself these tough questions and contemplate.

Ask yourself from whose perspective things are regarded as evil. How you see yourself (identify as) is the root of all evil. From your point of view, anything that rubs you in the wrong way is evil. Rape is only evil from your bias. If you were or only had animal consciousness, then rape would be the only way to go in life Evil exists as long as you exist as an identity.

Time is an experience/concept like all other experiences

Ability to discriminate between Real and Unreal

@Spinoza The dream has to turn into a nightmare to grow a distaste for it, right? And about ignorant people being happy; if you're living in a developed country, have decent regular food, education, health services etc. you're probably the highest happiness standard of at least 100ks of people worldwide. But the irony is, only you get to see your own shit, no one else. ''The grass always looks greener on the other side''