Bodhitree

Insanity I think has a lot to do with a temporary abeyance of the critical faculties. You think of something, like going for a walk in the park naked, and don’t feel any caution or ideas that this might be a bad idea, and just go and do it.

Well... humankind will save the planet or it won’t. The worst case is that in 150 years from now the world is largely a hot, polluted desert, the forests are gone and humankind is eking out a living while much of the overpopulated world lives in hunger and thirst and there are a lot of failed nations. Scorpions and tarantulas inherit the deserts. And it will continue like that forever. Extinction is unlikely. We are in a human-driven extinction event where biodiversity and wild habitats are declining rapidly, while capitalism seeks to maximise the amount of earths resources that we use. This places strain on the topsoil and the oceans and the ability of nature to regenerate itself, but what will happen is that wild nature will conform to the edges of the man-made structures. They may be small edges, but wild nature will survive. Controlled nature will continue on in large mono cultures sustained by man’s technology. Think of the huge numbers of chickens and cows in breeding farms, who get regular shots of antibiotics to encourage their growth. That also safeguards the monoculture against disease, and that is the potential killer.

This is one of the books which has been on my to-be-read list for a while. Nice quote. Extreme experiences are definitely one thing that let people get to know themselves, as long as they don’t get traumatised. Anyway I agree with @freejoy that it is worthwhile keeping track of books by people that might be enlightened and putting them in a separate category.

For me, the search for enlightenment starts with self-knowledge. You can learn to observe yourself, become gently more aware, start looking at the origins of the things within you. Organisation is a bit of an illusion along the path, it’s more a question of organic growth.

Well, he didn’t actually own them. Whenever his followers wanted to give him another Rolls-Royce, the money was tracked in a fund. When the Oregon commune folded, the Rolls-Royce collection was sold (at a profit I might add) and those who had contributed to the fund got their money back.

The solution is to do work that you enjoy. Your passion will allow you to achieve mastery in your chosen field much more easily, although of course you will still need to work at it.

It makes you think you know a subject, without any actual experience.

Thoughts come from memory. Experiences that you have (everything from learning to walk to the book that you read this morning) determine your thoughts.

The idea that nothing is truly important is a consequence of thinking of the world as a dream, and so some forms of non-dual philosophy also lead there. It is a shield from anxiety and worry, which disturb the inner peace of advanced spirituality.

Its now out on iTunes to buy so I finally got to see it, great film, really enjoyed it.

I think she is interesting, she has a lot of clarity. Thanks for posting.

Cloud Atlas perhaps?

I’m surprised no-one brought up the environmental aspect. The world is under a lot of pressure with 7 billion people on it, and having more kids is hard to justify if you care about pollution, the climate, biodiversity and the wild. If you don’t want to deny yourself a family, consider having just one child rather than a whole bunch.

Ah well. Perhaps ask yourself what you were sent here to learn?

It depends... if you want to have a partner and children then it’s something that needs sustained commitment and will take a lot of time, many of those people’s spiritual goals end up being delayed until after the children leave home. If you are willing to sacrifice relationships, children, family then you can spend more time on pursuing realisation while you are still young and have the energy for it.

There is this description of enlightenment, it’s from Da Free John’s The Knee of Listening. There is a thing the sadhu’ s do in India, they for a good while keep telling their hand to become a fist. It’s not squeezing exactly but just continually telling your hand, be a fist. Then eventually you won’t be able to easily relax your hand anymore, it will take consistent effort telling the hand to relax and stretch out. Enlightenment is like that, a process of slowly relaxing and letting go of something that has always been tense and has gotten used to being like that. This is why when you hear stories of enlightenment they often occur at the point where the person has given up the search. They search for years and years, then they stop, give up, and suddenly in the here and now what they searched for is there. So when you reach this point, of giving up the long search, be aware, it is a moment of opportunity.

I’ve lived in several communes, and my experience is that it would be difficult to sustain without some high consciousness focus that people are committed to. Something that people agree on and that keeps things together, in the Amazon the Indian tribes use ayahuasca ceremonies for this. I was in Osho’s commune in Oregon back in 1986, you should watch Wild, Wild Country on Netflix to see how things can go pear shaped with a larger-scale attempt at a commune. There are practical problems with facilities such as schools and banks and medical care and postal and delivery service, where there are people there will be relationships and eventually kids. You should be aware that these things will come. Anyway it sounds like a great idea, wishing you all the best, it’s a pity that Washington State is a long way from the Netherlands.

It is not so easy to be aware of where your personal enthusiasm is taking you. My philosophy has always been to do the things that give you joy, and if it no longer is enjoyable, then stop doing it and move on. But try to find out why you lost your enthusiasm, be honest with yourself.

Animals have less potential than humans, they are simpler, more emotive. But they don’t live in hell, hell is an imaginary place of intense suffering. Humans can suffer intensely, but they don’t go to an imaginary place to do it. For the most part, human suffering comes from the mind. There are always more questions, it is also a function of the mind.

If it leads to greater awareness, greater consciousness, then it cannot be bad. This guy had an experience, first-hand, and instead of integrating it into his life he choose to ignore it, and live a life where he believed something other than his lived experience was telling him. To me that sound like playground behaviour, sticking your fingers in your ears and saying nya-nya-I-can’t-hear-you. You could even argue that there is no such thing as hallucination, that everything that you experience is a little bit true. Think of these things as dreams, they are part of your experience but not precisely.

Some of it kind of reminds me what Terence McKenna said about aliens, that they are more a type of trans dimensional beings than real flesh-and-blood. He replied to a question about this: “The way I look at UFOs is that these are real physical manifestations of consciousness. They are vehicles that can exist in reality. But like consciousness they can exist in non physical forms. My theory is that the physical manifestations are the "Call" that will then pull you into this deeper and non physical aspect of the universe. I believe this is the purpose they serve. Not sure if thats clear but its difficult to put some of these concepts into words” That would certainly clarify a lot of what has always been mysterious for me about UFO’s.

I’ve come across gurus from India who say that enlightenment needs to be nurtured. This guy on the other forum chose not to nurture his experience, and return to the perspective of a materialist. He chose to turn down the opportunity he was offered to change his life. It happens to some people, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently.

There are a few different ways to approach “your demons”. The first is on an intellectual level, by looking at the darkness in your own behaviour. Anger, fear, hatred, jealousy can all be powerful negative forces within our lives, and if you can examine their roots, you can overcome them. Insight and consciousness of how they work within you are the key. This kind of shadow work i generally encourage. The second is on an psychic level. Which means basically go looking for them. This I don’t recommend, as an entity usually has some amount of independent agency. You may find yourself saying in a psychically charged environment, I wish to meet a small devil, and find this entity using all your worst, most self destructive impulses against you.

Aha! And you think that someone else does ?

Well... we know that everything is impermanent. And we know that there is suffering.