Mal

@MiroslavK Hi there... I don't want to say too much about this because ultimately it's your path. But what you're reacting to is predominantly other people's personalities, and the personality is not all of the person's authentic self. It is going to take a fair amount of work to realize this, but keep continuing with the work and I promise your current perception will change for the better. All these things are impermanent, and happily this also includes our perceptions. Keep at it Warm regards Mal

@Vigi @charlie2dogs Hi to you both... Correct me if I'm wrong but.. Vigi, when Charlie speaks of "you" he is not talking directly to what you "believe" your current identity to be: "Vigi the individual entity encased inside a psychophysical structure that we call the "human being"...

@JustinS Hi Justin, I'd like to add a small addition to @Arik fine response. Let's turn your inquiry on its head. In the words of the charming and funny Eckhart Tolle (thank you @Vigi for the recent clip and reminder) : "You are already enlightened. You just can't feel it because your mind is making too much noise". We are that which we already seek. But to "realize" this for ourselves means we must master the skill of Mindfulness. Were not seeking enlightenment on the cushion, we are mastering the essential skill of mindfulness so we can "get out of our own way". This I believe is a slightly more helpful context in which to approach this endeavour, because now "seeking" becomes a non-issue. And surely by now, most of us already know what happens when we give up seeking... -Mal

Charlie, I've been known to have been wrong in the past, I am sure I may be wrong now. Perhaps it is a cultural difference, even (more likely) a difference in development? In my eyes your response to Vigi's challenge was a little too dismissive for me to swallow. Along with many other passages of yours that I have failed to adequately stomach and have found myself veering away from. Perhaps your writing has brought up some residue of egoic delusion for me to work on? From a higher perspective than I care to admit currently owning, I probably no doubt have you to thank for seemingly triggering such a response in me. I have made considerable effort to try to understand 2nd tier development because this is the door to 3rd tier realization, and being able to spot an authentic 3rd tier realizer is absolutely essential to my own personal (and non personal) development. I subscribe to the notion that the higher tiers are built upon the lesser tiers, so even though I may not fully understand a 3rd tier perspective, I am fully aware that if I spot a 1st tier lens within an apparent 3rd tier response I tend to lose resonance as I'm always scanning for authenticity. I find some of your descriptions of what "ordinary" people are quite inaccurate and possibly surface reflections of perhaps a primitive reflection of your own disowned and deprived qualities? I don't see my intuition about your rancor as a defect, rather I see it as something that an authentic 3rd tier realizer should already know and resonate with, much in the same way I know instinctively how to suck my own thumb - yes I still can, even though I no longer do it... well, not in public shopping malls or well populated spots :- ) By the way, I was referring to my bad choice of words to highlight the possibility that you yourself indeed have failed to practice what you preach. Yes, moving on. My apologies to @SaynotoKlaus for veering off topic. Mal

Hi Charlie, Again, I admit I don't really understand what you are trying to say here. Perhaps it's because I am a human identity and obviously functioning unconsciously? To my ears you sound like you're suggesting that if I disagree with you then I can't be awakening "normally". I don't have an aversion to you perse, as you correctly stated, I know nothing about you. And maybe my choice of words ws poor, or perhaps you in your enlightenment (or certainly perhaps self defensiveness) wasn't able to read between the lines and "make an effort to understand"? But I actually meant your writing is not resonating because I don't believe such rancor would come from the mouth of a self realized being. Descriptions of the "unitive" self according to Cook-Greuter's research doesn't even suggest such traces of resentment - at that's even at the "lowly" level of the highest structure of ego development known to us. So I'm a little bit confused. You are arguing with me now. Or had you not noticed that either? Mal

@charlie2dogs Hi Charlie, I have to admit I am somewhat lost as to where you are leading us/people with these insights. Yes a more awakened person does not live in the head exclusively identified with memory and anticipation of future events based on that memory. But I'm finding it increasingly difficult to believe your claim that any sane individual (enlightened or not) would not be adjusted to reality in that there is indeed a past that is real and a future that needs to be planned for. Your description of a fully realized person sounds more like a dysfunctional tool unable to consciously adjust to the real world. I also harbour great suspicion for those who claim to know they are in contact with the absolute truth, who find reasons to argue instead of integrate and display an air of low level disrespect and a whiff of bitterness toward "ordinary" people who function at different levels of truth. I am also averse to people who seem to have lost the ability to speak to people on their level and give them the answers they need. Excuse me for my frankness but your posts are not resonating. -Mal

@hi guys Hi there! You asked the question - Well this is a great question, and while it's a challenging question and there are no quick or easy solutions, it excites me to find fellow knowers who are in possession of accurate foundational knowledge about the nature of reality, our mental-emotional constructs that we are all presently experiencing and how they have been formed. I assume that you might well agree with me that there is not a single one of us are truly culpable for our current circumstances because our individual and collective life situations could not have unfolded any differently than they already have. But although none of us are personally responsible for our past conditioning and present moment circumstances, I think the good news is we can - from now on - with the correct tools - make pre-determined choices in order to improve our experience of life. IF of course this is something that we really want to do? From my vantage point giving and receiving approval is an ordinary human and very beautiful form of exchange, as well as being an essential stage of human developmental unfoldment (conformist stage). I believe that the need for giving and receiving love and acceptance is what makes us human - without this need I think our experience on this planet would be a very different one indeed. I don't subscribe to the theory that this is at all a minor pathological process that needs to be looked upon as some kind of flaw or problem to be fixed. In addition, over the years I have observed that probably most people whether they are aware of it or not choose to stay at this fulcrum of development, mainly because I think society is at this point not set yet up for individual self-actualization to happen naturally beyond the conformist structure. Therefore, further development is not particularly obvious to us unless we take considerable time to delve into the sources of information and practice that point the way toward further progress. Integrally minded psychologists like Abraham Maslow have called this conformist era the "belonging needs" stage. However, there are further levels that we can reach if we desire, but in order for progression to happen we need to learn how to clearly translate and differentiate certain aspects of ourself, transcend them, and then eventually re-integrate them in their more evolved forms. If we are prepared to work on our traits our need for approval eventually blossoms into a "celebration of self and other" and consequently the need to help others fulfil their potential becomes the main area of focus for us. At this point the psychological trait evolves from a deficiency need into a being need. During this later stage the reward for "pleasing people" is now a sense of fulfillment at either being able to assist others in realizing their potential or just accepting them completely as they are - which I might add is an extremely rewarding perspective to inhabit! The main felt difference here is that the there is now no absolute requirement for other people to be anything for us other than who they currently are. But for us who have done the work there is instead a heightened sense of pleasure and satisfaction when others make strides to fulfil their potential. Either way it's a win-win and a non-duality situation. So essentially for us who are on the path of higher development there is no requirement to make neediness into a problem. Neediness itself is recognized for what it is: an essential aspect of being human. But, there IS scope for potential if we and/or others want to take self-development further than the current socially accepted centre of gravity. Maybe my explanation will shed a dim flashlight on why the need for seeking approval at this point seems so right to you? Maybe because it IS right. It is authentic and it is just fine for where you are now at this point in your life, because this is what life has designed for you. From where I'm standing I currently understand that authenticity isn't a set of characteristics that only "highly developed" people possess (whatever this means to us individually), but authenticity is a characteristic of being in congruence with who we are right now, no matter what. Are we going to deny the authenticity of a baby who hasn't yet had any life experience? Authenticity is present all the way up the spiral of human development. So there is no real reason for any of us to feel confused or worried that one is not being authentic - unless of course one is in denial of a fair proportion their real character traits! But, if it is what we want all of us are free to take our development to further stages: So if we want to climb the ladder of development past the need to conform I recommend we first take a look at this short collage of Sam Harris pieces on the illusion of "free will": Despite logically and experientially for some the notion of "free will" being exposed as an illusion and that we're all pretty much stuck with our "lot in life", I have myself unlearned the developmentally fatal mistake of assuming that in the context of enlightenment "self-development" is an essentially pointless endeavour. In fact, the in face of the stark reality that there is indeed no inner self in control of my experience, time and time again this insight has given me a very exciting platform on which to take self-development very seriously. In my opinion self-development doesn't mean developing the self that thinks it's in control of it's life experience, but is more accurately about the development of the vehicle - the manifestation, our conditioned thought and emotional processes that are the product of our past which can now be much more easily cleaned up and geared up for optimum satisfaction in getting our potential fulfilled. The fact that we are able to experience first-hand insight via meditation or self inquiry that free will is indeed an illusion and that there is no "self" residing in our experience, makes it all the more easier to develop because now this "self" is essentially out of the equation. This knowledge makes it much much easier to effect change in our system - because in reality change is all that really exists- so why not change in a direction that is healthy? In this light we are now free to move with this current and adapt our thoughts and feelings to serve us instead of hinder us. It's my firm belief that "No-self" and "self-development" go hand in hand. Anybody along the stage of developmental unfolding can have an experience of "no-self". It's true that not everybody can hold this realization at the lower levels, but in just the same way a new born baby has access to gross, subtle and causal states (waking, dreaming and deep sleep states) everybody, no matter how developed they are, can have "enlightenment" experiences. In fact, the more enlightenment experiences, the better for development and growth! To present this another way, I urge you to attempt to think about trying to change yourself while you still assume that all of this is personal to you, that you somehow own your experience and life situation. Contemplate this and you will hopefully quickly realize that as long as we are still in the grips of ego it is near on impossible to change, because the ego's very purpose is to get everything to adjust to IT'S way of being, which is (as you may have noticed) a completely losing game. The following insert is for all of us who are struggling with what we are supposed to be disidentifying from during meditation - It's not the personality that is the problem, but the basic assumption that we are in control of any of it: For re-conditioning I suggest the following video from @Leo Gura about the realizing the illusion inherent in some of our thinking: Upon reading your comment I presume that in your case you maybe presently believe that if you did something other than act upon your desire to please, for example, speaking or acting in a way that was self-pleasing, ignoring another person's request of you or didn't whole-heartedly continue with a conversation somebody else initiated (despite possibly a momentary lack of interest on your part) - that somehow, something "bad" will happen to you as a result? If this is genuinely the case for you then I can assure you that you are not alone, most of us experience this or have experienced this during our lifetime. If you do on some level imagine that something "bad" will happen to you if you do not conform, then I'd like to suggest the possibility that in this particular instance you might be buying into an "illusion". The possibility that you may hold illusions is not your fault, (all of us are holding onto illusions, many times and in many different contexts). Certainly you have already admitted that you already are aware (on some level, whether it be conceptual or experiential) that our current self expression is a by-product of a plethora of past conditioning that we have had no real control over. So in my opinion the first step here is to inquire into yourself and find out if you maybe condemning yourself over having this illusion which is driving any possible neediness - then proceed to giving yourself a break! Don't fight it. Accept it. Learn to love it - send it meta and compassionate loving kindness, hopefully much like you would send meta when thinking about all other people you know who are suffering with these same kinds of issues in this life. Leo has done a very good video on how to send loving kindness to these aspects of yourself: So I recommend a combination of essential daily practices: Meditation - to switch identification from the personal ego having an experience to realizing you are actually the container of experience, and Meta/Loving Kindness/Self Acceptance and Questioning Beliefs and Present Moment Focus - Realizing that the past is a thought and the future (as you imagine it) will never come Approach life as much as possible in this state experience. In my opinion the main realization to cultivate is that there is just experience and there is no controlling centre that we normally feel residing inside the head or behind the eyes. And if there is only experience then it's preferable to learn to love and develop our traits with feminine integrative based practices like "loving kindness" while at the same time deprive the controlling centre with masculine based practices of mindfulness meditation and present moment focus alongside the additional project of gently and gradually undermining the beliefs that are holding us at our current stage of development. I use masculine and feminine here in the context of Eros and Agape: The masculine practices are for the cultivation and strengthening of the "Witness Self" and the feminine practices integrate experience. The paradox of enlightenment is thus: The more we accept the less desirable parts of us and the more we deprive the part of us that wants to control our experiences the less "needy" we become and the more we develop upward from a state of "deficiency" (neediness) toward a state of "being" (autonomous generosity). But development and enlightenment always start with where we are now. We start where we are now and focus on the practice of these specific techniques and let go of trying to correct or even disown certain personal traits or characteristics on the intellectual level. I am personally at a stage of more-or-less uninterrupted gratitude for the wonder and richness of life and the people I encounter every day. I experience the world afresh daily and nothing seems to get "old" for me these days. For me there is nothing more blessed than having been born into this world. I hope that this depth of feeling will be with me on my death-bed, and if death really is a reality then I can retire from my existence a happy and fulfilled person. Mission accomplished! These tools and concepts have taken me on a journey, that although has sometimes been fraught with difficulty and pain, is now truly paying off in terms of happiness, social-functionality and deep satisfaction. I hope that the correct understanding and sincere application of these methods will do the same for you too. Warm Regards -Mal

Thank you @Corte for your kind words -Mal

Hi Carlo! Take a look at this video. It's a guided Vipassana style meditation from Sam Harris. I think of it as a good teaching method for those of us who are just starting out on our mediation path. This has some very good pointing out instructions for getting to the nitty-gritty of why we're supposed to be meditating in the first place. I hope you will quickly realize that "free-will" is an illusion and that there is no "you" who is "addicted" to these thoughts. Enjoy and let me know how you get on!

@Mary Hi Mary, I'm sorry to hear that you are finding this work difficult at the moment. This is saddening and my heart goes out to you right now and I hope you find some peace soon. On the other hand, I'm very glad that you are continuing to see a therapist to help you resolve these past issues. You are not alone I can assure you, most people could do with working on themselves, but most people don't even entertain that there could be something wrong, never mind attmept to straighten out their past and put it behind them. The advice I have for you at this point is keep at it, because the rewards really are worth the struggle! Also, this work you are doing is by its very nature difficult and is not designed to make us "happy" during the process. In my case I had to regress and face some very difficult aspects of myself. It is indeed extremely hard work and I applaud you for getting into the nitty gritty where so many people fail to even approach there. One of the aspects of this work is understanding and coming to terms with how just unfair life seems. That some people seem to just waltz around life without half the problems that we seem to have to deal with. Getting into this mindset and dealing with it head on is one of the hardest impasse to deal with. However, once this stage has been dealt with I assure you that things get a lot better, your perception of others, the world, yourself, everything will change if you continue on the path. It IS a path of suffering, but the suffering is not without a purpose. Stay strong. Warm regards Mal

@Corte Nice response. I'd like to add that we shouldn't forget that materialist is a stage along the way of developmental unfoldment, and therefore it is not entirely futile in itself to try to chase material treasure (and this also includes spiritual material goods in the form of enhanced well being, spiritual states, and even relational procurement aka conventional relationships). It's just not the "be-all-and-end-all" of life. It's not the complete story. Materialism is indeed a compelling stage, and the drive to seek in this realm is completely healthy in the correct context. Nobody in this life wants to be cut off from bodily existence, and even the greatest realizers so far in the likes of Ramana Maharshi would still have benefitted greatly from better integration of this aspect of living. Whether we like it or not we're always going to be a slave somewhat to relative craving for material forms. We currently have no evidence that we can fully transcend this realm without there being some serious problems as a consequence. I said before in a previous posting that it's always good to "go for it". This is because every stage holds a piece of the truth, and can satisfy some aspect of the whole. I even see my contribution to this discussion, along with yours and everybody else's as an Integral part of the whole picture. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts and all parts compliment the whole. Regards Mal

@BeginnerActualizer Hi there! Passion is great! The more the better I say. However, there is a downside. We can be passionate about things, but if the project is not connected to our life purpose then it's my experience that the project will quickly burn out or become very laborious. Spend somesome serious time in solitude and see if this venture is in alignment with your life purpose. Not your ultimate life purpose for all time, but your purpose now, for this era of your life. How to find this out, if you have not already? Ask yourself while in solitude "what do I have to do TODAY to die complete?" If you were given one month to live, what would you do with it? Once you have the answer to this question it will be obvious to you if this project is going to serve your life purpose or not. Passion is an energy, it gets things off the ground in the same way that rocket fuel aids a space exploration team defeat gravity. But if the exploration has no purpose, no identity, then no amount of rocket fuel is going to help it complete it's course. You need to have a purpose to succeed at anything in life because if you don't have purpose the next storm that comes is going to take you off course and when the passion dries up you will have no motivation at all to keep yourself on track. Find your purpose. It's essential living for a man. -Mal

@khalifa @Sleepwalker Hi to you both! Sleepwalker - you have given really great advice, so much so that you beat me to the post here and said everything that has been on my mind since first trying think of how to respond to khalifa's post. Thank you for this! khalifa - I would like to add to sleepwalkers advice to you and suggest that you don't take every single word Leo says literally and concretely. Play with the ideas. See if they fit. If they don't fit, leave them for a time when you're ready for them. Think about the concepts as just concepts that might be useful to you, instead of making a religion out of them - concrete and absolute instructions to live by. You mention nothing has value. Obviously I don't know what you mean by this, but I would also advise you to take that statement with a pinch of salt and just contemplate it rather than take it seriously for the moment. The way we feel distorts how we learn. It's always a good rule of thumb to be in a positive state when trying to learn something new so that we avoid tainting the teaching with our own lens. Your emotional body needs to be taken seriously and treated with loving kindness because it contains all your disappointments from the past that need to be acknowledged for healing. Another good reason to remain "positive" about our negative emotional body states is because this emotional body also contains great positivity too. There is gold in the shadow that can only be integrated by giving your negative expressions loving kindness. Practice meta meditation on your negative aspects as often as you can, either in private or only around people you trust. I dedicate one day a week to reflective "me time". I fast and cut myself off from all distractions and social media. I turn off my phone and I travel to a remote spot to soak up nature, practice karma yoga and give myself space to " regulate " and process what needs to be processed from the week and the past. For a deeper clens I book myself into a solitary retreat. Treat your ego well, don't fight it, don't try to get rid of it. Give it the respect it deserves and needs and it will work in your favour. This attitude is not at odds with enlightenment work, in fact it aids it! -Mal

@Man in the Mirror Hi! Enlightenment and reaching goals in my view are not at odds with each other. All those things that fall into the category of self-development like life purpose, setting and achieving goals have their place. In his latest book "Waking Up" Sam Harris suggests that "Enlightenment" is actually about finding durable happiness and fulfilment independent of fulfilling hopes desires and dreams. In my opinion it is about balance. In many ways at first we expect that fulfilling our desires will make us permentantly happy, and this is a false assumption. But exploring enlightement doesn't mean we give up seeking satisfaction altogether, it just means that we don't put so much emphasis on those external things to bring us lasting happiness. Still go for it! It's always good to go for it and create the life you want to live - Just don't expect achievement itself to fill the void for you, because it won't. Mal

@Locomike Hi Mike, Very interesting question. In my musings I came to the conclusion that some emotions are like residues from past events and the ego self is the accumulation of all our past experiences. If you have not already I urge you to make the effort for a short period of time to suspend all judgement or refrain from taking a psychological perspective on your experience. I hope that you will quickly realize that indeed your thinking mind is made up of judgements and mental positions, and the thinking minds reflection of this is the egoic emotional body. Indeed you will also notice a watcher who merely "see's" experience without adding anything to it or interpreting experience through a mental/emotional conditioned pattern. This is what I think a babys experience is prior to the child forming it's socialized identity. There are still changing states because there are physiological needs and there is still meaning, but the perception comes from a place of innocence rather than the accumulated meaning of past experience amd thus there are no psychological needs - it is a purer perception and is the essence of positivity beyond the conventional polarised mental positions of positive vs. negative thinking. In my opinion this is the state of "being" Mal

Here is a little technique you can use if you ever feel in a bad mood and need to quickly change your state. Don't forget that you must be in acceptance of your negative state first before this technique will work - Here goes: Pinch your nose using your thumb and index finger. 1) Breathe in for 4 seconds through one nostril while keeping the other nostril blocked. 2) Switch nostrils and breathe out for 8 seconds. 3) Breathe in again for 4 secods, then switch nostrils and breathe out for 8 seconds. 4) Repeat the process upto 10x

@Endew Endew, What you want to do is continue with self~actualization work. The reason I recommend this to you now is because I know from experience that if you try to force yourself to live a lifestyle that is not in sync with your beliefs, you will be rolling a boulder uphill only to watch it roll back down again. Beliefs are very powerful forces that run your life, and if you can become aware of the beliefs holding you back and change them into beliefs that serve you, then your life will be transformed without you having to do very much work at all - I recommend doing only very specific type of self actualization techniques. If you have not done already, take up a contemplative meditation practice. Vipassana meditation is good. Become aware of and examine the beliefs you hold about yourself and about life that have been driving your thoughts, feelings and choices. If you do this you will start to make a connection between your lifestyle and the hidden beliefs you are holding inside. You will begin to realise that your beliefs are not your life situation, but are really just made up in your head. If you can see this for yourself and come to terms with the knowledge that your beliefs are only inside your mind and that you are the one doing this to yourself, you will be able to reprogramme your reality gradually and create your life purpose - become the person you want to be, not the person you currently think you are!