Kevin Dunlop

Member
  • Content count

    220
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Kevin Dunlop

  1. Thats why I dont like to make negative predictions about other people or label them. I give them the opportunity to grow and be the infinite mystery they are.
  2. Is Enlightenment a lie? Everything you can say with words is, from some perspective, a lie. The word enlightenment and all its meanings can be infinitely argued for or against like every other concept. Your concept of enlightenment may be a lie, it might be true for you but never possible for another. I might say enlightenment and mean something you cant imagine, so what you imagine it to be may be a lie. All I can say is that for me ( Ill never know about you) my interpretation of the ideas presented on enlightenment, when incorporated into my beliefs, and then experienced produce an extrodinary perception, that everything I have learned so far doesnt compare to.
  3. Iam already on the other side of this question. I know what its like to improve the identity, to sort out the egos faults and see groth etc. But there is nothing the Ego can offer that is like the peace and beauty of unfiltered reality with no goals pushing you around - just let all that stuff happen on its own let yourself be free of it, then you can be more effective anyway. Life is not an emergency we have to be constantly taking care of its way more fun than that, expectations lead to disappointment
  4. Ego and Ego Death. The word Ego gets complicated because it gets used alot and its meaning dispersed. Thats why I like to call it the conditioned identity. Ego feels like something we are inside of its too personal, the conditioned identity feels less personal like a book I can look at as serpeate from me. I can see where it came from and analize it and the results of its use. The Ego or conditioned identity is what you learned during your life, from parents, society, TV, school ect. But dont forget the examples speak louder than the words. All of this you accepted as your filter on reality. This is a ncessary part of life. Humans learn and if our parents survived we want to know how they did it. This doesnt mean that all that we learned is good for us its just what there was at the time. This is the Ego what you learned to be, what you learned to want and to see, all your rules and definitions, objectives and desires - a bunch of learned stuff you think is you. The problem is all of this learning is represented to you in terms of words (bound in duality) and most of it was done when you were 3 to 7 years old. So its really flawed, and you can feel the impact of this but dont know that you can change it or how to, it seems too big a job to unravel the mess, so you just keep on running along with it. Also it is hard to see how your perception work objectively. Ego death Imagine that your Ego is a computer program that you are addicted to. You cant reach down and turn it off. Enlightenment work is like installing a virus into your computer so that it wont work anymore because you cant stop alone. These weird little phrases we are discussing in this site are like viruses you can install to shut off addictive programming. If you are tired of the egos program you might be looking for a way to shut off the computer and get back to reality. These helpful virus type beliefs may be the only way to free yourself from the computer but you have to do the work of installing them. Some people just collect these viruses as a new addiction and never install them so they never work, and they stay addicted to the learned identity. So if you manage to find a good virus and install it to shut off your ego computer its like an Ego Death. You will still have the memory of the addictive game but it will not be your only choice. You can percieve reality for what it is not what you were lead to believe it is. Once you start enjoying being outside you wont want to return to a pac- man addiction but that doesnt mean you dont know what it is anymore
  5. The experience of wearing silk underwear or fiberglass are both perception the same thing. I have tried both and both were experiences of perception. I mentioned it because it is useful to back up that far from experiences to work on how we are percieving reality and why. Thanks for the tip on Stoic beliefs, I didnt know about it, I downloaded a PDF of Marcus, from the year 121 AD! Pretty exciting Some would say wearing silk underwear all the time is better, but if it happens one day that I am covered with fiberglass dust I would learn a good lesson. Maybe its just as good to know about what to avoid. Maybe the fiberglass would help me protect others from this and awaken my compassion to a whole new level. If I had to calculate the benefits of not or having had the experience they might come out equal. If I think this way I dont have to go around with my mind on calculation overdrive. I can give it a break and experience the peace of not having fiberglass in my pants today.
  6. PERCEPTION - Ok Ill let you know more about this riddle I posted ¨every experience is the same experience¨. Everything is the experience of your perception. Enlightenment work is working on perception. We dont think about perception and how it is working for us, because normally we have nothing to compare it to. Normally we say, ¨ so hows that new car running, hows the wife, how was your day Buddy, but never ask how is your perception. Everything you percieve is funneled through the Egos trained filters. Enlightenment is percieving reality without the filter. In the same way I could say every thing you see is the experience of sight. Now we do Know how to ask about sight perception and effect it. ¨Can you see these small letters Buddy? No! here put on these glasses. ¨ Presto, the miracle of amazing sight just like that. But making perception better is not so easy, it would be like taking off some messed up glasses you got used to and seeing reality with your own eyes for the first time. The only problem is that the messed up glasses we have on are important to us because we are addicted to them and think we need them for survival, yes thats the ego.
  7. Just wanted to say that when I read your text I hear it in the voice of Keanu Reeves, cool effect!
  8. Another aspect of the common discussions here, that physics explains now, is the idea of emptiness. There may be some importance in incorporating empty space into our vision of reality. We are conditioned to focus on labeling what is there, not to think in terms of what is not there, and all of this has an effect on our consciousness. Now science says there is way more empty space between subatomic particles than particles ,if I remember correctly they compared it to the distances between objects in the solar system. So we are literally more empty space than stuff in their opinion. Then there is darkmatter and antimatter. Everyone knows that the sun has a huge effect on our lives, it heats the planet, keeps us in a stable orbit, is the energy used by plants etc. Now if we look at black holes, they are massive they suck up galexies full of suns whole, but we never think of how this nothingness effects us or is a huge part of what we are. If we shift our focus the the empty part of reality we see it differently, and feel it differently, maybe more relaxed. I bet there are lots of master musicians who could tell you every note in every song written by mozart. But none who could tell you what all the spaces between the notes are. We dont study the imperceptible but if we want to experience true reality as it is maybe we need to experience this balance too.
  9. I like it, very tripadellic, I could look at it all day. I think you guessed the answer to my riddle, and for this I award you the Gold Star magic thumbs up!
  10. When Iam truely experienceing, words are not being used to describe anything to myself. This allows for the beautiful experience of seeing reality without the limiting filter created by words. When I try to use words to describe my actual experiences, I am trying to explain experiences that are beyond explanation using a limited resource. Here on line we only have words to communicate, though there is a massive limitation here I still appreciate what I learn from reading what people write. So thanks again
  11. Yes I agree, I think we have been intensly conditioned to only pay attension to words, to simply label everything in terms of words, thats the game we were taught. So our experiences get limited by this filter, we were convinced to only listen to words so direct experience, the true unexplainable reality becomes an unexperienced reality and we get stuck with words, not fun. But since we are in a state where we will only listen to words we use some words to explain that there is another reality without words. Direct experience is amazing but we first have to give up on what we have been using to form our reality ...weird wuuuurds.
  12. Thanks for your post. If you are interested could you give us an opinion on Rupert Spira´s video, it inpart inspired this post. Iam not sure if you would agree with him.
  13. When the ego can be installed with a completely different perspective that feels better than what it has constructed, after years of conditioning, it begins to prove to itself that it does not understand true reality. The more you can get the ego to give up on imposing itself as the one authority on perception the closer you are to unfiltered pure awareness.
  14. Only if I use my conditioned identity to look for them. It can create all kinds of illusions
  15. Nondiscernment in not logical but neither is the intuition, that doesn´t make them wrong. Nondiscernment is a possible accepted perspective like the ego conditioned state. This perspective cuts out all of the mental battles we face about trying to find the best. If all is equal we dont need the mind to figure it all out. Joy is the state that follows, freedom. Its like creating an internal chemistry for joy, instead of looking for it from external sources. Stopping wrong thought allows us to experience reality in its profoundness and beauty, this is the source of joy.
  16. Ya, but youll just have to wait until I get round to posting them.
  17. The only difference between seeing it intellectually and experiencing it is conditioning it, with repetition, into the mind with as much intensity as your current beliefs. This takes time just as your current beliefs took time to incorporate . We think this is hard to do because we dont believe literally that nondiscerning ideas are true because they seem illogical. Belief and logic are the barriers our mind uses to keep us on track in the conditioned world that we have come to know as the only reality. But these barriers of the ego are not as hard to overcome as they make us thing they are. It is simple accepting the new thought as real ( not logically true ) and remembering to install it into the thought process enough times that it becomes the new perspective. With this reconditioning process you will be able to feel what it feels like to believe new illogical concepts. This breaks down the static state of the conditioned mind and opens you up to experiencing new states.
  18. Here is how it works. I dont ask you to believe it, because the conditioned mind has been taught to discern for many years. I only invite you to condition these accepted perspectives into your mind as a way to experience them. Its like convincing yourself of something you cant believe because you want to experience it, of course you can always go back. So here is a list of examples to guide the experience of nondiscernment All people are equal. Most people can respect this. We have equal rights and so on. No one should be seen as more important than any other. To add to that I use the thought we all have equal potential. Today he might be a disaster but this doesnt mean he could not be amazing later. Always have the highest hopes for people this helps them and you to improve. How can one infinite source of potential be better than any other? All places are the same. It doesnt matter where you are. One place is not better than any other. If we get caught up in trying to figure out what place we should go to, with the badly conditioned mind, we will miss the intuition, let its authentic wisdom decide. You are no better off here of there in the external world what happens inside is of value. Hard to believe or express but part of the deal. Often these enlightened people live in a forest for many years not wondering if it would be better to live in Tokio etc. All experiences are the same. When you reach the state of pure awareness there is no way to judge with mental concepts, that all falls away and reality is percieved differently, as a single undescribable experience.
  19. In this state ...Mind and Buddha are not a duality and both are in the state of suchness which is absolute and free from all contraries and relativities. Empty Cloud ‘Though there are many expedients for the purpose They are identical when returned to the source.’163 162 Hua-tou is the mind before it is stirred by a thought. The technique was devised by enlightened Masters who taught their disciples to concentrate their attention on the mind for the purpose of stopping all thought to realize singleness of mind for the perception of their self-nature. 163 Quoted from Manjusri’s Long Gatha in the Surangama Sutra. (See The Secrets of Chinese Meditation, page 34, and the Surangama Sutra, pages 143-9).
  20. It is of paramount importance first to transmute the sixth and seventh consciousness, for they play the leading role and because of their power in discriminating and discerning. While you were seeing the voidness and the brightness and composing poems and gathas, these two consciousnesses performed their evil functions. Today, we should use this hua-tou to transmute the discriminating consciousness into the Profound Observing Wisdom and the mind which differentiates between ego and personality into the Wisdom of Equality. Empty Cloud 233
  21. yes Iam in the process of training this state of automatic forgiveness. Luckily thats all it takes for me, finding the error in my conditioning, finding a better concept, remembering to replace it enough times and then enjoy the automatic freedom of incorporated improvements. Isnt the mind great that way:) Its greatest flaw is also its greatest strength
  22. My social activity is helping people, its not for me but it yields much more rewarding feelings than doing things for me. I dont want anything so I am then free to ask others how I can be of help to them. Here the level of love I give and recieve is much higher and makes merely owning things as a way of ataining satisfaction seem rediculous and completely silly.
  23. If you dwell on these things you torture yourself and you could get ulsers, depression and insomnia. No one deserves this so dont hurt yourself trying to get revenge in your mind hurts you too. Maybe you dont know how good you are at forgiving. For example you have already forgiven all of the atrosities you know about and thats alot of forgiving. You dont go around letting all the bad things that happened in history ruin your day. You could, if I tell you to focus on all the burned people in Hiroshima after the bombing, their children and all the damage that was caused and said ¨this guy here did that!¨, you would freak out and punch him in the gut! But if you dont think about it you have already forgiven him You let it go, you let the slave drivers who profit from your iphone off the hook, you forgive the farmers who sprayed roundup on your salad, you forgive all the teachers who made you sit down for 15 years when you wanted to play outside. You are really good at this you just didnt know it. Its just not convienient not to forgive thats your truth so you pick and choose when you think you need to.. its not justice at all! So are you really better than they are, or do you make mistakes too?
  24. I am at a point where this is what I know I need to reach the next level I am bubbling up to. I can forgive myself, I can forgive children, but I have trouble forgiving adults. Expectation leads to disappointment- could I really have any other expectation of an adult in out time? No just because someone is an adult doesnt mean they are wise, they make huge mistakes, are poorly trained, confused, ill. Forgive them too, dont be upset thats just going to poison your body. Stop thinking they deserve your revenge, they dont they deserve to get better just like you. Anyone has alot to learn they can all be seen as young and be given hope for profound changes in the fucture. This is what I am reminding myself of now and conditioning myself to think and feel.