UnbornTao

Sorry, I can see my tone may have been a bit harsh. Since there seems to be a fair share of assumptions operating in the background, you may ask: "What is God?" "Is it true I was shown something by another being?" "What did I actually experience?" Setting aside hearsay and bias, making those questions can help clarify all this.

Perhaps a more effective way to approach this investigation is by noticing that everything you end up doing, you intended to do - even when you say you "didn't really want to." When it comes to taking action, intent is the main component. It is essentially the same as the action itself - a concept that generates and co-arises with action. Contrast this with desire, which is the wish for an imagined future scenario to come to pass, without necessarily requiring action. If you did something, you intended to do it. Intent obviously comes prior to the consequences of the action. In your experience, intent shows up as the action. This focus tends to simplify the matter. Stand up and sit again - what made you do that? Notice that concepts like motivation and desire aren't required in order to take action.

Yes. It requires consciousness. The paradox is that everything in our experience - which is where our life happens and the place we'll look in - is relative. We find that we can't find ourselves there, and yet, direct realization is possible at the same time. How come? Go figure. And openness isn't limited to the mind either; it could be applied to feeling, the body, and awareness. It's based on not-knowing. It's a bit tricky. Regardless, it's useful to remember the mind isn't limited to logic or intellect, as useful as they can be. Your last sentence is a good way of putting it. Don't you dare invalidate my suffering It's your condition now so there's no need to reach it or do anything extra, only to recognize it. That's apparently easier said than realized, though. Still, whenever you've been happy, you've accessed that. What stands in the way of this possibility is our selves. Remember Ramana: he lived in a cave while insects were eating his body, and yet he was blissful. He was free from life and death. It's independent of circumstances. What you're referring to is survival or conventional happiness, which is fine too. But notice: being happy doesn't mean being complacent, dumb, or lazy, nor does it mean we can't create what we want in life. You can be happy and still pursue a certain degree of comfort, for example. It's not like happiness has to keep you stuck with your circumstances. 'Freedom' is a good term to use for that.

Oppenheimer The Count of Monte Cristo @Schizophonia French! I watched it in Spanish, though.

Is that cheetah a nazi?

You don't need to be enlightened to stop doing your suffering.

what the hell and who is this "leo" guy?

--- You don't have to. Yet notice the consequences. A natural effect of that disposition is self-deception. You lie and get what you want as a result, but no possibility of real freedom is found there. As for your last question there, you already know what's self-serving. In short, assessing and pursuing that is your job in life. That isn't wrong or bad per se, it's necessary to a degree. But it tends to be exclusive (it excludes, separates) in nature. Any form of lying is exclusively self-serving, as is twisting the facts to fulfill your agenda. To clarify, I'm not asking you to believe anything. Notice that you don't get to decide how gravity works. You can't turn it off for a day and switch it on again the next, or bend it to your wishes. It is not up to personal interpretation or perspective. The principle certainly doesn't care about our opinions, doubts, preferences - it doesn't care about us at all. It - something other than you - makes the rules, so to speak. In this case, it is an objective law. You already recognize this. The same "realness" usually applies to other principles as well. Not every little thing we encounter has to be questioned. That'd be impractical. What's being investigated sets the rules. It could be an emotion, an object, perception, or skill. Be grounded and tell the truth about what you experience. Again, 'questioning' is not an excuse to disregard common sense and basic discernment. I said it didn't exclude them. Try going to space without an astronaut suit. 2 + 2 isn't 5. You can't lie your way into what's true. Skill can't be faked. Eating a rod of uranium isn't healthy. It sounds absurd on paper, yet the deeper point can be missed. Our choice is aligning with reality, or not (rather than the other way around.) Refer to the etymology of principle above. Principles are empowering if adopted, but you can live however you want. Still, consider that, without integrity, no experience of wholeness is possible. Being sloppy creates a certain experience - just as dumbness, intelligence, honor, and so on. An ideal, by definition, is a conception of a perfect, unattainable result, image, or outcome, projected onto the future. And it always creates suffering. It exists only in imagination. A principle is like a "law." The truth is completely independent of you and only serves itself. You seemingly want to be the one establishing that, relativizing everything and assuming that it is dependent on you - on what you think, believe, want. This is where I imagine the quote from Jesus about serving two masters comes in: I hear that as a contrast between "selfishness" and truth. Reread the post above. We were talking about principles:

Definitely. And we are almost always engaged in some kind of activity. Still, "direct" isn't an action. We can't go from "here to there" - and yet, without the attempt, realization is unlikely to occur. So we're faced with a paradox. I was simply using "magic," trying to induce a realization. Hopefully, it helped us bring focus to a more present experience of ourselves. To clarify: if the goal is uncovering the truth of something relative, then the context shifts, and with it, the appropriateness of different tools. If maturity is our subject, then focusing the mind, feeling, and other faculties may be called for. "Direct," however, usually points to the absolute, which is the context of our conversation. Sure, the mind can help, but it cannot make the leap, as you suggested above. It's a bit like trying to get dressed using a computer program: you can plan what to wear in countless ways, but that in no way accomplishes the task of getting dressed. They belong to different domains. Contemplation is not thinking - it's more like "silence" or a kind of "waiting," so to speak. It is dwelling on a question and based on true openness. Thinking may well arise, but it should not be confused with the intent to experience the truth. By necessity, approaching existential subjects requires a tool other than thought. I'm oversimplifying here - don't take my word for it - but the mind may be a limited form of consciousness. Not quite. Undoing implies that a process was already occurring or being generated in the first place. As a result, you may assume that the activity was originally "happening to you." But if you don't generate suffering in the first place, there's nothing to undo. My point was related to this latter approach. That doesn't change the fact that we do generate it, though. Still, if this kind of happiness is independent of experience, then it follows that you can suffer, or experience anything for that matter, and be happy at the same time - a bit like getting dressed (being happy) while also using a computer program to try out different outfits (experiencing things). Probably stretched that analogy too far.

Make a decision now. A process, by definition, is something carried out, rather than an existential (metaphysical) aspect of reality. In other words, it is an action or set thereof. We could think of reality as the primary condition that allows the existence of process. What is versus what is done. To use your example: obviously, you wouldn't choose to open a 'door' if there were no frame for it; you might instead decide to insert a frame so the door can exist. The doors you open are ones you've already decided to open. And no extraneous explanation or story is necessary for what's essentially a simple physical action. I'm trying to shift the discussion toward our experience of decision-making.

That's for it to decide, that is, the commitment is to whatever is true (or skillful, functional, healthy), not what's self-serving, even though in the end it might improve our experience too. Something outside or beyond ourselves makes the demands. To start, we could take this out of the realm of abstraction and focus on what's presently in front of us. What is what? Acknowledge what's occurring and call things by their name. If you're experiencing anger, don't pretend it is something else. The act of questioning doesn't exclude common sense or basic discernment. Questioning every detail or triviality we stumble upon is obviously unfeasible. Often, what we want is to formulate high-quality, open-ended questions. For example: What is anger? Rigor in this case would require making finer distinctions within our experience of that emotion in order to discover what it comprises and why it exists. You may find out that, contrary to personal and cultural belief, anger is caused by you and not others. You may also find that a sense of hurt always underlies the emotion, and in that way, a more authentic condition is revealed. Principles are like rules, setting the parameters of reality. It's not about correctness but simply about "what's so". Aligning with them - or failing to do so - produces real consequences. If you have a body and live on a planet, you have no choice but to align yourself with the principle of gravity. If you pretend you can jump off a cliff and fly, there will be consequences for failing to adhere to gravity. The same applies to life principles such as honesty, learning, excellence, and integrity. They're not ideals, by the way, nor are they necessarily the images that arise when considering the term. What are they? What do they demand of us? For example, when you set out to learn something, objective feedback will be provided if you pay attention. Can you make the dish as instructed, play the song, or score the goal - or not? The result is the proof. Now, apply that to other principles: Are you being sincere with yourself about your internal state, did you keep your word, did you create something with excellence? The choice of whether to adopt a given principle is yours; in any case, it's useful to be aware of the consequences of going one way or the other. A bit messy, but I hope it helps in some way.

Well, suffer something minor now, deliberately. Generate some form of suffering. (Not physical! I'm talking about mental-emotional suffering, like comparing yourself to an ideal self-image, or simply imagining the lack of something you desire.) OK, now that you've done that successfully, what went on in your experience such that that particular form of pain could arise? What did you do? How did you interpret and make sense of events? That's the gist of it. A lot of this is the equivalent of poking your own eye and then attributing it to external causes. Of course, that's a simplistic analogy, but it makes the point: we aren't aware that we are, in fact, "poking our own eyes." We don't make the connection (experientially) between our actions - broadly defined to include what we think, believe, interpret, and so on - and their consequences. The main thing is to recognize that this activity is what one is doing, even though it appears that the suffering is caused by circumstances. An exercise: What are you not suffering right now? Create a contrast between your current experience and one in which a new form of suffering is ocurring. What does that contrast reveal?

Yeah. Also, it's a bit more abstract and airy-fairy than usual - compared to the other sub-forums, which deal with more "mundane" matters.

I'd move almost all of these kinds of posts to the Intellectual subforum.

Chocolate cake?

The best way to quit is to not try it in the first place.

I suggest you clarify what it is you are inquiring into - in a grounded way. Are you not talking about interaction and effectiveness? If so, why bring up existential matters? Or maybe I'm mistaken. But you don't need these extraneous explanations or stories; you can just make a decision. Also, let me take a different approach: How do you see 'force'? In your experience, what does decision-making require?

Definitely. That's an important recognition. Then again, why concern ourselves too much with what stands in the way when the direct route is available? Rather than going off on tangents, go straight for the target. Your method may be more gradual and better suited for transforming the self, but both approaches are useful as long as truth is the goal. I'm not sure about the role of the mind in contemplation, though. It is far from an intellectual exercise, and yet the mind might have some influence - like ballparking your efforts or getting at the door, so to speak. The leap at that point is consciousness' job. Where is your last sentence coming from? There's no need to undo something you aren't doing in the first place. But that's beside the point: why not be happy, period? We could give it a serious try. And we'll go through this and that experience and state and feel different emotions.

Absolutizing fantasy is neither accurate nor appropriate. You don't want to paint it with a broad brush. Fantasy is fantasy; it can often be readily recognized, especially when it is superficial and exclusively based on wishful thinking. Being clear about what is what in one's experience allows us to better notice when something is straight-up biased, subjective, or self-serving. Rigor is a useful distinction, and alongside openness, rootedness is another key principle to adhere to. We can distinguish between different types of claims: An account of events or a story, for example: "Bob went to the beach." Conjecture - an assertion coming from a particular cosmology, stated like "Our Guru was able to walk on water, defying the laws of gravity, because this and that adopted notion, and look, so many people believe it." From how he operated, Ramana seemed sincere and trustworthy, so his communications carried weight. This discernment matters. Still, that story simply exemplified a point: happiness is "internal." I agree that your thoughts, emotions, and actions have consequences, and they should be acknowledged. However, the deeper question remains: can you be happy regardless of your current state? You assume that circumstances are what creates happiness in the first place. Feeling good, getting things to work out, and gratification may not be happiness but something like success or relief - nothing wrong with those things, by the way. If you didn't care about "surviving a self" at all, perhaps there'd be no impediment to being happy all the time. This is why I asked above. Here's an experiment: Be happy now. Now, notice the excuses you immediately come up with in relation to that instruction. One might be: "But I can't - what would motivate me to take action?" But that assumption is inaccurate. You can be happy now and still do things, since this freedom-happiness is independent of action and experience. Suffering isn't required as a driver for action; intent is the main ingredient there.

Appreciate it, I share that sentiment.

What do you mean more specifically? Are you talking about making decisions? If so, you can actually make a decision right now, and it would be a done deal. You've made the decision.

I'm not really interested, but it looks cool.

Is openness its own goal? What purpose does it serve? How do we balance that principle with groundedness? Together, they form a dynamic essential for discovery. Generally speaking, openness seems directed toward learning, effectiveness, or becoming conscious - in one form or another - which suggests there is something to be grasped. It is not simply "anything goes," nor is it merely about being overly abstract or philosophically entertained - unless that is your goal. When we recognize that we don't know something, or that we lack skill in a given activity, we can open ourselves to possibilities beyond our usual patterns, knowledge, and viewpoint - even mind and perception. There is also the trap of adopting openness only as a character trait - as a social manipulation and aspect of one's self-image. In this way, we may pretend to be open while failing to follow the principle in practice. And again, remaining rooted is key, in a way that acknowledges real possibilities.