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.

@tropicana Exactly, Look for example at the RZA, the leader of Wu tang Clan. I' ve read his book Tao of Wu. He gained spiritual knowledge of self as young boy but eventually he was raised in NY projects. So his childhood and youth was the School of Hard Knocks. I'm not from US, but I also grew up in the projects, in very harsh,fucked-up environment. Does anybody still naively thinks that Enlightened human being(whatever finally this means) is always nice and kind and do-goody? As RZA said... come in peace, but be prapared for war

I suppose that no one has license on having "optimal path to enlightenment". Buddha as a being was no better or worse than me. He lived on exactly the same terms as we do. "What is enlightenment, which is so often said to be the ultimate goal of meditation? There are many esoteric details that we can safely ignore—disagreements among contemplative traditions about what, exactly, is gained or lost at the end of the spiritual path. Many of these claims are preposterous. Within most schools of Buddhism, for instance, a buddha—whether the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, or any other person who attains the state of “full enlightenment”—is generally described as “omniscient.” But actually what does it means? "omniscient", "omnipotent" or "omni-anything"? Is it reasonable to expect that an ascetic in the fifth century BC, by virtue of his meditative insights, spontaneously became an unprecedented genius in every field of human inquiry, including those that did not exist at the time in which he lived? ... I doubt it. Knowledge of self that one can attain in pursuit of enlightenment is different category than knowledge of the objective, material reality that is normally thought as our natural environment that we live in. The similarity lies in the experiential side of the study. When you do natural science, you use scientific method. Start with hypothesis that is foundation to make experiment and observe whether hypothesis is empirically valid. Then you can do it again and again, and perhaps formulate some general formula like Law of physics for phenomenon that you study. In case of studying awareness, you can do analogously: Claim Hypothesis: There is no discrete self or ego living like a Minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. Do Experience: Meditation session And result is ... everyone has to check it by himself. I don't trust in any claims of any guru or contemplative master like Budda or Jesus. There is no spiritual authority that I will just blindy follow. Of course the role of the teacher giving "pointing-out" instructions may be very helpful but in the end human experience is irreducibly subjective. So everyone must decide for himself independently and approach it rather with skepticism because there is so much hustle in this spirituality business. Natural science is easier, because probably you don't have any emotional inclinations towards "outer, physical reality". So it's easy to make objective, third-person observations. No one will deny for example discovered by Newton Second Law of dynamics: F=a*m. It complies with our intuitive imagination of how physical objects behave. For example: "There is two objects with different masses. Both are free falling from the same attitude. The heavier object will hit the ground with greater force than the lighter one." Now, in case of studying awareness, there is an obstacle: Actually, you are awareness. But on the same time, you already have concept of self and very deep-rooted sense of identity based on your life experiences, thoughts, beliefs and so on. So there is a conflict. The teachings of Buddhism and Advaita are best viewed as lab manuals and explorers’ logs detailing the results of empirical research on the nature of human consciousness. But of course you won't approach it with the same degree of neutral unprejudiced demeanor as in class of physics. I think introspection/meditation is just study on consciousness itself and to me, there is no evident relation between awareness and as you said, good will toward others and right behavior. It is necessary to govern own's life with ethics, but awareness is simply what it is. Nothing more or less.

Personally, I think you are confused about this Enlightenment. In fact, we are all incarnated in body and we all gonna die, so this is not matter of choice. You are a chimp, whether you want it or not :). So you can forget all concepts about Enlightenment, Power of Now, "getting in touch with the nothingness" and the like. Spiritual awakening absolutely doesn't exclude working, achieving goals or just enjoying your daily life experiences. It has nothing to do with giving up your personal life to become a "spiritual person" whoever it may be. You can include for beginning Mindfulness practice in your life to become self-aware chimp and take very practical benefits of it, without making any exaggerated metaphysical/existential claims on nature of cosmos or life&death. "The quality of mind cultivated in vipassana is almost always referred to as “mindfulness,” and the literature on its psychological benefits is now substantial. There is nothing spooky about mindfulness. It is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Cultivating this quality of mind has been shown to reduce pain, anxiety, and depression; improve cognitive function; and even produce changes in gray matter density in regions of the brain related to learning and memory, emotional regulation, and self-awareness."

I had similar problem. To me helpful in understanding why I stucked with this "Enlightenment process" was information from book written with big clarity on the subject. In my case, this whole seeking for self-transcendence was mostly playing myself and still being confused in duality. Some experiences that I had was powerful, like being present and free from thoughts not for few moments but for longer periods of time but attachment to this experience is blind alley. Permanent Cessation of thoughts never arrived, the more Enlightenment Nevertheless, I've gained new approach to address this stuff. Few quotes from Sam Harris Book "Waking up. A guide to spirituality without religion." "(...)most of this effort arose from the very illusion of bondage to the self that I was seeking to overcome. The model of this practice is that one must climb the mountain so that freedom can be found at the top. But the self is already an illusion, and that truth can be glimpsed directly, at the mountain’s base or anywhere else along the path. One can then return to this insight, again and again, as one’s sole method of meditation—thereby arriving at the goal in each moment of actual practice.This isn’t merely a matter of choosing to think differently about the significance of mindfulness. It is a difference in what one is able to be mindful of. Dualistic mindfulness— paying attention to the breath, for instance—generally proceeds on the basis of an illusion: One feels that one is a subject, a locus of consciousness inside the head, that can strategically pay attention to the breath or some other object of awareness because of all the good it will do. This is gradualism in action." So when I started practicing meditation it was also gradual approach, "Gradualism is the natural starting point for any search, spiritual or otherwise. Such goal-oriented modes of practice have the virtue of being easily taught, because a person can begin them without having had any fundamental insight into the nature of consciousness or the illusoriness of the self. He need only adopt new patterns of attention, thought, and behavior, and the path will unfold before him." Now, I'm focused on teachings like Vedanta "The whole of Advaita reduces to a series of very simple and testable assertions:Consciousness is the prior condition of every experience; the self or ego is an illusory appearance within it; look closely for what you are calling “I,” and the feeling of being a separate self will disappear; what remains, as a matter of experience, is a field of consciousness—free, undivided, and intrinsically uncontaminated by its ever-changing contents." and Practice of Dzogchen "The practice of Dzogchen requires that one be able to experience the intrinsic selflessness of awareness in every moment (that is, when one is not otherwise distracted by thought)—which is to say that for a Dzogchen meditator, mindfulness must be synonymous with dispelling the illusion of the self. Rather than teach a technique of meditation—such as paying close attention to one’s breathing—a Dzogchen master must precipitate an insight on the basis of which a student can thereafter practice a form of awareness (Tibetan: rigpa) that is unencumbered by subject/object dualism. Of all the Buddhist teachings, those of Dzogchen most closely resemble the teachings of Advaita. The two traditions seek to provoke the same insight into the nonduality of consciousness, but, generally speaking, only Dzogchen makes it absolutely clear that one must practice this insight to the point of stability and that one can do so without succumbing to the dualistic striving that haunts most other paths." to go beyond duality "The practice of recognizing nondual awareness is called trekchod, which means “cutting through” in Tibetan, as in cutting a string cleanly so that both ends fall away. Once one has cut it, there is no doubt that it has been cut. I recommend that you demand the same clarity of your meditation practice."