Guczo

Yes, It ain't hard to distinct (conceptually - the trick is of course that it ain't conceptual thing.) that ultimately I wanna get to know myself ( as formless awareness ) but at the same time - why should not I play with forms and enjoy them?

"Most of us could easily compile a list of goals we want to achieve or personal problems that need to be solved. But what is the real significance of every item on such a list? Everything we want to accomplish—to paint the house, learn a new language, find a better job—is something that promises that, if done, it would allow us to finally relax and enjoy our lives in the present. Generally speaking, this is a false hope. I’m not denying the importance of achieving one’s goals, maintaining one’s health, or keeping one’s children clothed and fed—but most of us spend our time seeking happiness and security without acknowledging the underlying purpose of our search. Each of us is looking for a path back to the present: We are trying to find good enough reasons to be satisfied now." I can't relate to level of Eckhart Tolle or Ramana Maharshi, because I am "struggling to get enlightened" and they are an example of sudden realization. They wasn't chasing after it at all. They didn't knew about non-duality before their Enlightenment. I glimpsed that non-dual realization couple times but then again I turned back to being still obviously psychcentric individual. I still want/need things like desires and goals, but I approach them in [non-dual] more calm and cooler way then in the past. If i would truly destroy psychecentric consciousness I would become something akin to the prototypical Tibetan or Christian monk - a simple, childlike, unegoistic, unemotional being who no more thinks of disturbing objective universe. RAMANA (he was 16 years old when it did happened) "While sitting alone in his uncle’s study, Ramana suddenly became paralyzed by a fear of death. He lay down on the floor, convinced that he would soon die, but rather than remaining terrified, he decided to locate the self that was about to disappear. He focused on the feeling of “I”—a process he later called “self-inquiry”—and found it to be absent from the field of consciousness. Ramana the person didn’t die that day, but he claimed that the feeling of being a separate self never darkened his consciousness again." ECKHART TOLLE: (he was deeply suffering his first 29 years of life and then it happened suddenly) "For many years I had been deeply identified with thinking and the painful, heavy emotions that had accumulated inside. My thought activity was mostly negative, and my sense of identity was also mostly negative, although I tried hard to prove to myself and to the world that I was good enough by working very hard academically. But even after I had achieved academic success, I was happy for two weeks or three and then the depression and anxiety came back. On that night there was a disidentification from this unpleasant dream of thinking and the painful emotions. The nightmare became unbearable and that triggered the separation of consciousness from its identification with form. I woke up and suddenly realized myself as the I Am and that was deeply peaceful." So you see @kibrekidusan - suffering may be the best teacher on this path. For many of us the only one. I was also suffering, more than most people I know that had more normal/stable life circumstances. I had specific, individual health and personal problems that made me emotionally drained and exhausted. I suppose it putted in me concern about enlightenment. After time, I discovered that it is something more powerful that just tool for stress-reduction. Of course true knowledge of self is available for everyone, but I wonder if someone is really bound up with ego and successful in conventional way, than he presumably wouldn't have any concern for even starting his searching.

Haha, you got me with this one. Couldn't take it seriously. Who would care of thoughts in moment like this? Thoughts just vanish or at least are irrelevant when appearing during fucking or masturbating.

@Ayla You can communicate instructions only through words. Words are just signpost. Words/thoughts are not problem themselves. Our automatic habit to fail to recognize them as words/thoughts is.

Many people renounce the world because they can’t find a satisfactory place in it, and almost any spiritual teaching can be used to justify a pathological lack of ambition. For someone who has not yet succeeded at anything and who probably fears failure, a doctrine that criticizes the search for worldly success can be very appealing. To me, there was personal need - my mind is very active and speculating. So for first 23 years of my life, I've been lost in thought continually. When I discovered it - peace and rest from mental chatter was so wonderful, even if only for few minutes. Can't imagine that anyone would start spiritual teachings or any other activity without having some own's benefits from it.

"In my view, the realistic goal to be attained through spiritual practice is not some permanent state of enlightenment that admits of no further efforts but a capacity to be free in this moment, in the midst of whatever is happening. If you can do that, you have already solved most of the problems you will encounter in life." Because what could happen to you when you are totally aware in every next single coming moment? Struggle/challenges are inevitable, but all this experience can't really touch you then. You don't identify with thoughts or emotions: You will fail to achieve something you wanted to achieve - so what? Somebody will tell you something "mean" - so what? You could stay then cold-blooded in every given situation The only real danger is then physical body being damaged/sick/injured.

And what I found was khaki trouserlegs terminating downwards in a pair of brown shoes, khaki sleeves terminating sideways in a pair of pink hands, and a khaki shirtfront terminating upwards in—absolutely nothing whatever! Certainly not in a head. haha it's genius. simple and plain as a experience. But factual state is this - my physical brain does exist. But that's not matter of this experience of having no head.

When I first time read about this Harding's experience of having no head, I started laughing. Somehow I thought it was funny self-denial - but that's the perspective from ego point of view. Of course, he actually was experiencing no self, so logically he had no self to deny.

@Leo Gura I'm aware of that - we could say materialistic science is cognitive tool - pretty reliable - but it's only dead conceptualization and pale, reflection of the thing itself. We can never get to know things itself (like Kant defined it) through concepts or senses. For example we can never realize how "God" figured out Golden ratio, which appears in some forms of life. But we can very precisely define it through mathematics . Of course, this is only our primitive, intellectual reflection of "God's Mind". We actually can't get to know about how big and powerful this actual phenomenon of Golden ratio is. We can only perceive it and describe it with mathematical language.

First of all, please understand - I started out this spiritual journey with basic assumption that materialistic science give us very precise answers on, generally-speaking, questions: how? I just thought that it failed to give answers when we ask: why? In fact, also philosophy and all faith-based religions that I've been exposed to failed in it. So then I took the attitude of agnostic towards mystery of existence. How does it work - mechanical laws, electromagnetic, chemical reactions and so on, all this fields of science. Then, you have BIOLOGY. In terms of biology, each of us is just "carnal machine" (so to speak), programmed by DNA code for survival and reproduction. Then we got medical sciences based on biology, that gives us in very real way answers on question: how does works organism? how we can heal it when it's sick? Also technical sciences on which based is our whole technology and civilization. What is common feature of all this fields of knowledge? Each one of them is objectively real. Phenomenon explained by it doesn't need awareness at all to exist. What about existing Cosmos and Earth before any organic forms of life emerged? According to scientific explanation of history of Earth - There was for long period of no organic beings. But there existed mass of matter and there also existed natural laws of physics. "However we propose to explain the emergence of consciousness—be it in biological, functional, computational, or any other terms—we have committed ourselves to this much: First there is a physical world, unconscious and seething with unperceived events; then, by virtue of some physical property or process, consciousness itself springs, or staggers, into being. This idea seems to me not merely strange but perfectly mysterious. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true. When we linger over the details, however, this notion of emergence seems merely a placeholder for a miracle. Consciousness—the sheer fact that this universe is illuminated by sentience—is precisely what unconsciousness is not. And I believe that no description of unconscious complexity will fully account for it. To simply assert that consciousness arose at some point in the evolution of life, and that it results from a specific arrangement of neurons firing in concert within an individual brain, doesn’t give us any inkling of how it could emerge from unconscious processes, even in principle." This physical principles is universal - you can make now the same experience as they did 200 or 2000 years ago and receive the same results as they did. Moreover, there is no need for conscious being to perceive results, because the same physical cause-effect phenomena was in game before even consciousness occurred. Of course, still, one could say that "Everything is awareness." or "Everything appeared from one single idea. (This echoes Plato's concept of Forms or First Principles)". It may be so. But does it deny existence of objective, physical realm of being? Sometimes I explain it to myself this way: Our basic realm of existence is biological, animal. But beyond that exist also possibility of attaining higher meaning - becoming aware of itself and then reach out towards the limitlessness of its conscious existence. I'm still carefully agnostic in case of our polemics. Does, as you say, physical objects are just "game" or Maya, that is secondary to awareness? Or maybe consciousness Is simply a freakish by-product of the brain’s natural functioning - an illusion or delusion incidentally caused by interactions of electrochemical energy? Is awareness prior to the physical realm or vice versa? Or maybe it's something like in-between: self-awareness is the most powerful tool in the game titled: Survival of the fittest. I don't know. I know that all these assumptions and concepts I wrote about counts for nothing in terms of non-dual practices. I've seen most of your videos on the subject of spiritual enlightenment and I agree that penetrating illusion of self demands stripping away all this layers of concepts. Let's face it - Thinking is indispensable. I won't abandon my rational mind. I need critical thinking (reasoning) as a tool. But our habitual identification with thought—that is, our failure to recognize thoughts as thoughts, as appearances in consciousness—is a primary source of human suffering. It also gives rise to the illusion that a separate self is living inside one’s head. And certainly I can't agree with you on the subject of non-realness of physical objects. But thank God that at the very end of my exploration, I found meditation - the non-conceptual way of knowing. Non-dual, experiential awareness is like oracle that never speaks. It doesn't seem to have need to know all the right answers. Indeed, it doesn't need any answers to know.

Good topic :). MJ is like a pure bliss without need for having experience of transcendence but overdosed, it certainly affects functions of mind: concentration and memory for example. 2) Awareness can't get higher/lower. There is experience happening in consciousness. If i get high after staying sober for longer period of time, I sometimes suddenly bump into some synthetic thought-processes or original perspectives or any interesting work of imagination but that's it. These are heightened experiences in awareness. Perhaps it could be useful to keep one's mind in more still and relaxed manner during meditation, but on the other hand - you become then substance-depended and that's the dead end. Personally, I treat it just like occasional zone-out without "doing"meditation

@Leo Gura You're talking about experiential side. There is actually non-dual freedom, however tricky and hard "place" it is to get there. The same thing I can say about making experience of no self based on one of your videos. It was valid. It works. But what about material, physical body? As a sentient being, each individual is inevitably bound up with his/her body. Of course, one could say that there is nothing but awareness, but again: Does anyone claims that physical world isn't real? That it's just appearance in consciousness? I suppose that this speculation doesn't get me any step closer to Enlightenment, but this conceptual issue just comes back again and again to my head [or should I rather say: to my awareness ]. It bothers me.

ILLUSTRATION of HARDINGS FPP (First Person Perspective)

I don't know how many of you heard this story of D.E Harding, but let me just quote the author (source: http://www.headless.org/on-having-no-head.htm) Harding’s assertion that he has no head must be read in the first-person sense; the man was not claiming to have been literally decapitated. From a first-person point of view, his emphasis on headlessness is a stroke of genius that offers an unusually clear description of what it’s like to glimpse the nonduality of consciousness. "The best day of my life—my rebirthday, so to speak—was when I found I had no head. This is not a literary gambit, a witticism designed to arouse interest at any cost. I mean it in all seriousness: I have no head. It was eighteen years ago, when I was thirty-three, that I made the discovery. Though it certainly came out of the blue, it did so in response to an urgent enquiry; I had for several months been absorbed in the question: what am I? The fact that I happened to be walking in the Himalayas at the time probably had little to do with it; though in that country unusual states of mind are said to come more easily. However that may be, a very still clear day, and a view from the ridge where I stood, over misty blue valleys to the highest mountain range in the world, with Kangchenjunga and Everest unprominent among its snow-peaks, made a setting worthy of the grandest vision. What actually happened was something absurdly simple and unspectacular: I stopped thinking. A peculiar quiet, an odd kind of alert limpness or numbness, came over me. Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down. For once, words really failed me. Past and future dropped away. I forgot who and what I was, my name, manhood, animalhood, all that could be called mine. It was as if I had been born that instant, brand new, mindless, innocent of all memories. There existed only the Now, that present moment and what was clearly given in it. To look was enough. And what I found was khaki trouserlegs terminating downwards in a pair of brown shoes, khaki sleeves terminating sideways in a pair of pink hands, and a khaki shirtfront terminating upwards in—absolutely nothing whatever! Certainly not in a head. It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything—room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snowpeaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world. It was all, quite literally, breathtaking. I seemed to stop breathing altogether, absorbed in the Given. Here it was, this superb scene, brightly shining in the clear air, alone and unsupported, mysteriously suspended in the void, and (and this was the real miracle, the wonder and delight) utterly free of "me", unstained by any observer. Its total presence was my total absence, body and soul. Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around. Yet in spite of the magical and uncanny quality of this vision, it was no dream, no esoteric revelation. Quite the reverse: it felt like a sudden waking from the sleep of ordinary life, an end to dreaming. It was self-luminous reality for once swept clean of all obscuring mind. It was the revelation, at long last, of the perfectly obvious. It was a lucid moment in a confused life-history. It was a ceasing to ignore something which (since early childhood at any rate) I had always been too busy or too clever to see. It was naked, uncritical attention to what had all along been staring me in the face - my utter facelessness. In short, it was all perfectly simple and plain and straightforward, beyond argument, thought, and words. There arose no questions, no reference beyond the experience itself, but only peace and a quiet joy, and the sensation of having dropped an intolerable burden." Criticism: “We have here been presented with a charmingly childish and solipsistic view of the human condition. It is something that, at an intellectual level, offends and appalls us: can anyone sincerely entertain such notions without embarrassment? Yet to some primitive level in us it speaks clearly. That is the level at which we cannot accept the notion of our own death.” How many of you think that this is example of sudden realization and enlightenment? Who thinks this is, as pointed out in criticism, childish death-denial? Personally, I think this is brilliant description. I also experienced many times this silent awe: losing feeling of my inner self, but gaining peaceful state. But from strictly materialistic point of view, this is solipsism/escapism/reality denying. On rational and critical level, we can't just say that consciousness/awareness is independent of physical body. In fact, every single conscious experience that happened in my lifetime was actually in awareness. But I can't simply disregard and neglect the consequences of tight relation between awareness and physical body (classically, subjective/objective, two sides of the same coin).

Sam Harris: Waking up It's something like Eckhart Tolle for smart people. He writes there not only about meditation practices but also about drug experiment like MDMA. Personally, I've tried once MDMA on my holidays and it showed me how radically different and richer my experience could bethan "normal" state. Also some other drug experiments was "breakthroughs" and "shortcuts" in showing me capabilities of human consciousness.