UnbornTao

@Cred Also, are you using AI to write your posts? If so, ease up on that and disclose it when you do. Just a heads-up.

Thanks. And what was that like? Were you able to experience having no language at all - no self-talk, no symbolism, no reference, and so on? Did you experience the genesis of this invention? It's a difficult meditation, partly because we will try to use some form of language to get us out of language. We shouldn't forget that language can also take the form of images, sounds, and so on. Imagination, for example, seems to be largely language-based, which is the main thing we'll do when we try to answer that question with our minds.

I'm the one with the tambourine.

@Human Mint Good believer. Well said.

For some reason, I want to watch The Land Before Time again - or Littlefoot, whatever it's called. I think I watched it as a kid, and it left a strong impression on me, if I recall. Might have been the series.

Well, you wouldn't receive that very well either, would you? And again, I don't know where this sort of antagonistic relationship to survival comes from. Again, it's your life. To think that one is somehow "above" survival is delusion.

Okay. It's more about focusing on one's own ignorance and unconsciousness. But I think I understand the sentiment.

From George Washington and Lincoln to Trump. What an upgrade.

That episode is old. We all should make chocolate cookies at some point in our development.

As always, I like to point out that everyone's shit smells, including our own. And perhaps this tendency to overlook our own stuff adds to this sense of... spiritual superiority, perhaps.

The religion or the podcast?

Stop defending your victim's mentality so much Survival is life.

@Cred You are prolific.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cookies/

got it, thanks.

Okay, thanks for playing. Appreciate it.

Oh boy. Another religion. I'm a believer

It sounds like there's a conflation being made here. If you want to so-call raise your consciousness, the only real requirement is to contemplate. If you want to feel the body, then do that.

What do you mean? Contemplate anything, like what a belief is, for example.

Good You're wrong in my case, and I don't know about the others.

How are we supposed to brag about ourselves, then? I wouldn't be so quick to presume that, anyway.

You seriously need the Empowering Listening video like a fish needs water. Again, you think you're special or something, but consider that people just don't bother bragging about these things, nor do they make them true. One can be very committed to a fantasy, and the fact that you can't tell a charlatan from a skillful facilitator should ignite curiosity about this principle. This is an artificial frame coming from the use with the drugs, so yeah, it's not true. It relates to experience.

I honestly don't know how to respond to this. I'll say a few things anyway. Your mention of "continuing the tradition" hints at where your mind is coming from. As with Ramana, you seem to think you understand him - and this is precisely one of the clearest examples of very poor listening. For starters, one of his most straightforward points, regarding drugs, was completely missed. How did that happen? How things look, and what people say, is rather secondary, yet this is what people tend to get hung up on. The students likely had this distinction more clearly grounded in their own experience, which is why they paid closer attention to their guru and were much clearer on their own ignorance.

The thought of it doesn't just occur on its own (which is the impression I got from reading your paragraph), you generate it. You can change it, or stop doing it altogether. You can even change your relationship to the apple by shifting your thinking about it. Yet, these are extraneous or supplementary activities added to something perceived as objectively existing. This is the distinction to notice, which is already operative in our lives. How does harm come to exist? Not in perception itself, but in how you, and not some fixed system, interpret and react. The malleable nature of this process suggests a deeper layer of perception that remains untouched by subjective distortion, which is the realm of objects as they are. Consider this: Have you ever taken offense at something someone said, only to later realize you misunderstood? In such moments the harm vanishes instantly. This reveals that the relationship between perception and reaction isn't as rigid or fixed as you made it out to be above. Interpreting something plays a big role in how we experience things. For example, the act of perceiving an object hurtling toward you only delivers raw sensory data and so doesn't inherently carry meaning or intent. The "harm" arises from how you process that input. This difference is what we're trying to clarify for ourselves. I'm not trying to imply that this matter is as easy or simplistic as simply "having different thoughts." There's a reason this is experienced as solid and fixed. It might function like the kernel of an operating system.