UnbornTao

"What do you want me to say?"

Lol Just in case, it was a joke.

You and Schmachtenberger, Wilber, etc

You have to kill a goat with your bare hands and eat it raw.

How could we define each term? How can we move in the direction of experiential understanding?

So did you just fall out of a coconut tree?

Honesty. To be clear, if (big if) you actually realize your nature and aren't just jerking off, which is likely the case. In any case, why would you openly claim that stuff, knowing that it will be received in the wrong way?

Made Flan!

Good post.

Red, although there're several types of them.

Maybe there's nothing after all. Not to be confused with nihilism. Don't believe this. To add some: others, life, mind, experience, objects. Any distinction that shows up or appears as, real. But knowing what's the case ourselves is a totally different matter and won't be what we think it is or might be.

Why not? Life's short.

Testify!

Distinguish between intention, which co-arises with action and contains an element of want, and desire, which is a complementary conceptual activity of wishing for an imagined experience to occur in the future. The latter does not require action, while the former arises with it.

Confucius.

I don't think that "skill" applies to consciousness, but I get your point. Fair point, as I haven't studied his work deeply. Discerning between authentic individuals and charlatans is tricky. What are they about, and where are they coming from? This should remove many candidates. That is why I said "philosophy" in the conventional sense (intellectualizing, mostly) might be a more apt term to describe what he's up to, based on the sense I got from paying attention to his experience. With some effort (lying), you can get convinced that someone is awake and "knows" more than they do in actuality. When it comes to consciousness, "pure" or untainted by intellect, comes to mind, much like the spirit of Zen.

Okey doke.

In short, your mind is making stuff up that may not be grounded on "reality", true events or fact, whereas getting present tends to decrease your conceptualizing, providing a more accurate perception of what is happening within your experience. What's left in your experience when you strip away the ideas of chakras, hell, god? Feeling, thoughts, perception; elements in a raw, intimate and present form that are somehow more real. Even though you may benefit from them, reconsidering your relationship towards them--acknowledging that these may be beliefs and so not existentially true--helps create distance from them and opens up genuine questioning. Therefore, increasing one's presence is a good direction to move towards. Hope that helps.

Don't go by rumors. We may postulate, given some creative freedom (conjecture), that it's true already. And you're fine. See? Neither is it relative. So horror or fear doesn't apply here, so to speak. I'm not talking about psychedelic states. Should make a distinction between what's existential and what's mentally produced activity; the latter is what fear is about, and with enough consciousness, it can be decreased and stopped. Why would you be afraid of the truth if it's always been the case and, to get poetic, it is you already? So again, taking what you've heard on faith is not going to serve you. That way, you create certain expectations that aren't based on what's real, but add on to it.

I'd say it's more about the self-transcendent nature of beauty. It may not be about the object of perception, but perhaps about the fact that it exists--existence itself. Like wondering: what is this experience really about? For example, where is beauty found? You may read a poem that don't quite understand, or perhaps find it uninspiring. Although the poem remains the same, after going through a particular experience, reading it again may take on a different meaning, making it particularly beautiful to you this time.

@BlessedLion Still think he's too stuck in intellect (hence not really about enlightenment work) and doubt what he's conscious of. Overly focused on charts, mapping stuff, and providing a cosmology, which I think it's misleading and not the purpose of said work. It can be convincing and smart but that's distinct from simply communicating an authentic experience or direct consciousness. He might be aware of certain relative dynamics, but that's my opinion so far.

From a certain viewpoint, the moment we are born, we are doomed to play a game that can't be won. But so what? Without concocting a worldview about it, you can notice that how you hold yourself and the world is an activity whose source is you. If that's the case, when you see it happening in your experience, you can stop generating it. It's essentially carrying a subtle moody disposition as a backdrop of your experience, and blaming "life" for it. Heard it's quality material. From the little I've actually read, it looks promising. I find this infuriating and don't know why. I'd just call it philosophy, in that case.

One reason not to think in terms of "spirituality," especially when considering politics.