UnbornTao

How often do you find yourself acting out of self-defensiveness? What is an act not rooted in "re-action"? In other words: What is a response?

You are funny.

One reason you look everywhere except within your own experience for growth or understanding is that you assume your perception accurately reflects reality. You take your experience for granted; that is, you believe that the way you experience things is, at its core, "true." As examples, notice how it doesn't occur to you to question your experience! Since you've been perceiving objects for a time now, you conclude that you know what they are - intrinsically. You think familiarity is the same as understanding. Or notice that you look for external sources to tell you what emotions like anger or fear are. Questioning the accuracy of your perceptions is often dismissed as a philosophical luxury, an abstract pursuit. Why is that? If perceiving something isn't the same as truly knowing it, then what is there to comprehend? How could we even approach such an investigation? So try this: stay with your present experience of fear. Be with it fully. See if you can experience the activity without referring to memory, knowledge, or explanation. What happens then?

Maybe the occurrence of insight during intense meditation retreats. How come intense meditation seems to facilitate insight - both minor and life-altering - and presence (mindfulness)? Insight in the context of retreats. Something along those lines, perhaps.

It seems to me that the question attempts to validate a position of victimhood, ignoring the active role each person plays in shaping their own life. Forget about God. Without a belief system getting in the way, and speaking from experience, what is it that you're trying to ask? And why?

How would you frame or phrase a particular area to be researched? I assume it needs to be fairly specific and somewhat technical.

Got it, thank you.

Start moving in the direction of what's true - at any level. Begin by paying attention to your experience and being straightforward about it.

... and God said: "Let there be misogyny!"

That's not what I said. Not many enlightened women are widely-known partly due to their historical roles in many cultures. It seems to be true that, generally speaking, men are more likely to become hermits or monks-philosophers, while women are more socially-oriented or outgoing. In any case, both sexes are completely capable of this pursuit. It simply requires commitment and the discipline to follow through. Is it a "male" self or a "female" self? It's a self, after all - doing work that threatens its (presumed) existence. It isn't easy for anyone.

"The Flower Sermon is a story of the origin of Chan and Zen Buddhism in which Gautama Buddha transmits direct prajñā (wisdom) to the disciple Mahākāśyapa. In the original Chinese, the story is Niān huā wéi xiào (拈花微笑, meaning "Picking up a flower and smiling")." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_Sermon#:~:text=The Flower Sermon is a,a flower and smiling"). Apparently, yes, but such cases are rare. You should take them with a grain of salt. If you grasped your nature (again, not a small if), then it may have occurred in your own case. Likely, though, you're talking about something other than enlightenment - as you said, psychic abilities. A deep state, connection, or feeling isn't a realization of your nature. This breakthrough is self-validating. When it occurs, the individual is clear as to the nature of what they became conscious of. Yet, this clarity isn't a function of mind or of wanting something to be true - it's a function of the direct consciousness.

Why not do it without input from AI? While it can be useful overall, relying on it kind of defeats the purpose of contemplation. You could ask: What is my experience of intuition? And then contemplate it in real time - either as you try to intuit something yourself, or by observing others who seem to be doing so.

What do you mean, specifically? You need to take into account how women have historically been relegated to very limited roles in many cultures. There was often a strong stigma around women speaking openly about these topics - they might have been seen as mad, or even as witches. As a result, they may have had to veil their insights in “acceptable” religious language - or poetry, perhaps. And that’s just one factor. I’m aware that similar dynamics may have applied to certain groups more broadly - like Sufis - regardless of sex. But the point is made - poorly, but it is made.

I don't see the point in bringing up the sexes. Both are equally uninterested. Seriously though, humans as a whole couldn't care less, except when it is pursued as a fantasy called "the truth."

It might be that most forms of suffering - not physical in nature - are not caused by external circumstances to begin with, and therefore aren't imposed on us against our will. Each of us plays a central role in the generation of this kind of suffering. As for meditation, I'd say the practice is about healing and training the mind - which are also aspects of survival. You meditate to calm down, improve your state and experience, sharpen your concentration, and so on. Contemplation, on the other hand, is the sincere pursuit of truth through questioning. We might say that seeking what's true is a different pursuit from the survival of the self - though it doesn't necessarily contradict or negate it. As an analogy, survival is like the kernel of your operating system. We often see 'survival' as something beneath us - but it can also be viewed simply as life. In that light, rather than resisting it as something negative, we can learn to embrace it more fully.

So, can we perceive that there's no "tree" there?

@Carl-Richard @zurew See? Funny coincidence. Not so easy to ascertain what a tree is, after all.

Heard it while walking past a beach bar.

Hard wood.

@Carl-Richard Too flat and 2-dimensional.