UnbornTao

As close as anyone else

You're focusing on intellect. I want us to focus on experientially locating self. This isn't enlightenment either but a way to ballpark one's contemplative efforts. Where is the clarity about you? Both communications have the "stink" of intellect. What I hear is extrapolation, process, feeling-state. Don't sound like direct experience, likely state changes. They can be healing, blissful, and awe-inspiring. Let's postulate enlightenment is you and now. Attempting to communicate it would show up naturally and simply, as nothing is closer to you than you. In short, we have to grasp who each of us is.

Maybe the expression should be: What rock are you living under?

Why is an adversarial disposition towards others adopted?

Fair. On the other hand, using the same words doesn't mean we're talking about the same thing. I intent to be grounded on experience. You're still judging and comparing "answers" you've heard to what I said. An idea is an idea, where you hear it is secondary. If someone comes from a genuine breakthrough, that's what relevant, not their reputation, personality, or medium. You could be a homeless man living on the streets.

How does an enlightened master make an omelette?

Observe, pay attention.

What do you want? Why do you want it? Create a strategy aligned with your purpose and from that establish specific goals. Move towards your desired direction little by little. People pursue their wants even without spirituality. Happiness can occur for you whether one's desires are achieved or not. What is happiness?

Valid point. Healing and enlightenment are different pursuits. They can complement each other but each has a different purpose.

Enlightenment won't get you out of debt, cure cancer or prevent your wife from leaving you. It isn't an achievement. BUT, maybe your experience gets recontextualized, and you are able to detach yourself from them. As an analogy, you may recognize yourself as an actor in a play.

I'm not coming from that place. You think of enlightenment as findable, as it if were a state and an experience. Personal beliefs and character traits are secondary when assessing a person's authenticity. What do you expect to hear? An answer is an answer, even if clever and intricate. A change in state can be blissful, such as feeling one with the universe. Enlightenment isn't a state, though, it doesn't "transforms" or "descends" upon you. Recontextualization bug:

I took it seriously although in the end it is just an interesting question to entertain. What makes you say that?

The money I'd pay if talking to Jesus and Buddha were possible. Got 50 bucks in my wallet.

"Everything you've got about enlightenment is bullshit", there's a valid point there. Enlightenment is not an experience. What thing descended on, and transformed, him? I've been looking precisely into this "nihilistic" phenomenon as it relates to this topic. When people hear that they don't and can't find themselves, they seem to react in two ways: "Who cares, then? What does that have to do with me?" And/or; They conclude that it is impossible So they get disillusioned and pursue something else. The good news: it is possible for you to become conscious of what's absolutely true because it is not separate from you. Keep contemplating and stay there.

Relationship, communication, listening, manipulation, honesty. Juicy topics for a video! @Leo Gura

Not an enlightenment -- at least by the description. A change of state likely.

You're speculating about what is going to happen based on hearsay whose presumed reality hasn't yet been experienced. If you are alone in the universe, who is that you you're speaking about? Contemplate that.

Mind is whatever it is. Can't transcend something you're not conscious of. And even then, I suspect it would still have a huge influence in your experience. Language, communication, knowledge, and understanding are part of mind; you'd be free from it but still using it. We must not confuse simplistic analogies with the reality of what we're talking about. So our job is to know what the mind is.

What does that mean? What is mystical and mystically gifted? What are the differences between these and awakening?

Oh okay, didn't read that.

I assumed that's what he meant, as whatever concepts you've got about it are only ideas and not true. By that definition, a lot of people know what it is.

We mean he isn't enlightened. Of course, almost everyone holds ideas about enlightenment but these are as useful as any other. I get the appeal, it can be entertaining.

Do you know who you are?

Not the person to ask those questions. Adyashanti, Rupert Spira, Eckhart Tolle are better for that.

You're not being sufficiently honest. Be clear about your experience. What are hate and judgement? Self-concerns might not relate to what's true. Honesty serves the truth, and what's true is independent from self. Whether it is painful or not has to do with your relationship to the truth, not it itself. Communication is getting across your experience and experiencing someone's else's exactly as it is for them. Intending to elicit a reaction in another is a manipulation, not honesty. Caution is caution. It requires perceiving the current event and responding appropriately. This doesn't mean lying nor withdrawing. Caution and honesty aren't mutually exclusive. You don't tell a stranger his face is ugly as you walk past him on the street because you see it is out of place, and this isn't lying.