UnbornTao

@puporing @Jodistrict I think now we may be conflating healing with awakening.

New learning is useful, but so is unlearning what is untrue and ineffective. Balance the subtle dynamic between addition and subtraction. Clarify an obscure matter so that its essence is left open, pristine, lucid, without interference, just to be seen.

What's the difference between being abstract and being free by collapsing (removing) distinctions?

An assumption is held as real, it isn't recognized to be an assumption but appears as "reality" for you. It is held in such a way that it isn't recognized as something that's assumed by you. --- Assumptions are unrecognized, "hidden" beliefs. They are held as reality and are more challenging to cognize than beliefs. As with the eyes, their function is to observe from them, not to look at them – you operate from assumptions. "Reality" for us is most likely a set of existential assumptions that we've come to believe and now are attached to due to cultural programming.

When not-knowing is the case, which is always, beliefs are invented and adopted in order to cover up one's fundamental ignorance on the matter. Doing so makes us feel better, at least temporarily, even with the nagging sense it might be a pretension. But despite our best attempts to the contrary, in our experience we still don't know the most fundamental things, no matter how fervently we latch onto a thought (belief).

A thought about what you hold to be true.

@kieranperez @Leo Gura great dialogue

It's a toy.

If what you want is enlightenment -- becoming conscious of what you absolutely are --, I'd say contemplation is the most direct practice. Intent to know the truth of your nature now. Ask: Who am I? until you become directly conscious of it. Keep contemplating while you integrate these enlightenments into your life. Study many perspectives but don't take them too seriously. In the end, validation has to be done through personal encounter with the reality of something. I recommend checking out Ramana Maharshi. He seems genuine in a way that virtually no other teacher feels like, to me.

How could someone so smart and "truth- advocate" vote for a pathological liar like Trump?

Thanks? @Leo Gura

Blissful state? At that point he had already awakened.

Enlightenment occurs now, regardless of which activities precede it. We sometimes assume that it will happen "some day". Set the intention to get it now. Talent and genetics are relative things but I really don't know whether they have anything to do with enlightenment.

"Normally this awareness is only generated after a long and arduous period of spiritual practice but in this case it happened spontaneously, without prior effort or desire. Venkataraman, the sixteen-year-old schoolboy, was alone in an upstairs room of his uncle’s house in Madurai (near the southern tip of India) when he was suddenly gripped by an intense fear of death. In the following few minutes he went through a simulated death experience during which he became consciously aware for the first time that his real nature was imperishable and that it was unrelated to the body, the mind or the personality. Many people have reported similar unexpected experiences but they are almost invariably temporary. In Venkataraman’s case the experience was permanent and irreversible. From that time on his consciousness of being an individual person ceased to exist and it never functioned in him again. Venkataraman told no one about his experience and for six weeks he kept up the appearance of being an ordinary schoolboy. However, he found it an increasingly difficult posture to maintain and at the end of this six week period he abandoned his family and went directly to the holy mountain of Arunachala." -- Be as you are, David Godman. @Leo Gura

Ramana Maharshi is an example. Without prior knowledge or practice, he had a profound and lasting enlightenment. It happens spontaneously (now). I shared my interpretation of what that teacher meant. Also, I'm mostly speculating. Some teachers aren't, though.

@Gesundheit2 @zurew Hallucinated awakening is better called hallucination, in my view. To be clear, Peter's point is that regardless of state (angry, happy, bored, anxious, high), awakening can occur because what happens within your experiential field is irrelevant. Enlightenment isn't perceived. He's not invalidating the possibility of awakening while high but saying that it is absolute. Whatever you do within a dream is something relative that won't wake you up. The way I see it, a state of openness is required -- that's what practices like contemplation and psychedelics help generate. However, states come and go, they don't cause direct experience because consciousness is you. All that is required, in the end, is grasping your nature.l Consciousness becomes conscious of itself. Direct sh*t.

Isn't that a bit like thinking that drinking coffee within a dream will wake you up?

Compassion helps to whomever is in pain. If you are not going to be a bit sensitive, then at least don't add wood to the fire.

That's my point. Except awakening (direct consciousness).

How many people have really awakened from psychedelics? How many of them will credit their enlightenment to anything other than themselves? According to Jed McKenna, psychedelics are part of the dream. Ralston seems to be implying the same thing, albeit in his notoriously grounded way. I hear tell that Timothy Leary, for example, tried really hard to achieve enlightenment through their use but he ultimately couldn't. According to Peter, he may have had many insights, so Peter's making a distinction here between awakening and insight (perhaps insight as a function of the mind). Anyway, enough speculation for me.

Pedri kicks ass

Suffering can be radically reduced, pain will still be there.

Ok, I'm open either way, then. Until I personally settle the matter for myself with massive experience, I'll try to remain grounded. That's not what I meant. Poor choice of words on my part. I was just trying to point out that methods are relative. And that a process isn't direct.

From my limited experience with them, they can open the door, but you're the one who enters. In other words, they may create the possibility of becoming conscious by opening your mind up, but the one who becomes conscious is you; it isn't done through an external factor. I asked Martin Ball about this. He basically agreed that ultimately, it is up to you to become conscious, not to the drugs or any other process. It's possible that Peter is coming from "the absolute" whereas Leo is coming from a relativistic stance, thinking that "things" external to You will accomplish the work.

Peter holds insight as distinct from direct experience, I think. He does admit that psychedelics help produce insights but not direct consciousness, because it is you who does that -- an intermediary can't do it for you. Besides, he does acknowledge that they can influence the brain and mind. I fear we're misunderstanding Peter because the way he holds certain distinctions is different from ours, sometimes. For example, it's easy to hear "direct experience" and readily assume we know what he means. But we may be conflating that concept with experience, mind or perception. Probably not you, Leo. Didn't he dropped a ridiculous amount of acid once? He's done his fair share of psychedelics.