UnbornTao

Belief does nothing for you, that's one of my points! Be open and contemplate.

Looks like a zen patriarch. Classy. Leo Tzu.

I'm not sure the body needs processed sugar. It's more like an addiction for most of us. You could try homemade black iced tea. Obviously it won't taste as good as commercial drinks but tea is one of the healthiest beverages along with water and coffee.

This is a question not to answer but to contemplate for yourself. The goal of such questioning is to personally and directly experience your nature. Start with: Who am I?

@integral Consciousness is prior to the brain, I've heard.

@Carl-Richard Nothing that can be done within a dream is waking up.

Because I'm blunt and straightforward. I may also come across as a righteous motherf***er with an inflexible stance on this matter. Well, there's a reason for that. Try to see through the arrogance to listen to the points I'm making. My main point: you wake up by waking up, there's no way around that.

Responsibility is a fundamental principle here. Nobody will do it for you, not even their communications. Even if they are true, they are received as hearsay until experientially validated by each of us individually. You confuse believing in others with personal understanding.

Hearsay comes from others. When you believe a communication instead of experiencing it for yourself, that's hearsay. If you do, why provide so many quotes from others? Why not speak from experience? This may be done as a way to safeguard oneself and to be validated since communications don't come from your experience but another's, and you don't know whether they're true or not. This behavior heavily relies on the work of others and lends itself for confusion. Believing and parroting others should not be confused with personal understanding. As this work deals with one's experience, that's where it begins and ends. Intellect is nothing compared to experiencing the truth for itself. It's easy to fall into intellect. Ultimately, this work is aimed at personally experiencing what's true, so responsibility is an essential component of this inquiry. This requires standing alone, on your own two feet. For example, on your deathbed, your ideas about truth make no difference. Either you are conscious, and therefore from death, or not. Can you see what I'm pointing at? Reinventing the wheel allows for understanding its nature and function from the ground up. Doing this provides the possibility of mastery and change. It seems to me like you are stating: "Why contemplate for myself if others can provide me with the answers?" Believing is much easier and popular. That's probably why the serious contemplation demanded of this work isn't soberly considered by most people, much less undertaken.

You misinterpret my points, fitting them into belief systems. I'm coming at this from a grounded experiential inquiry, not just cosmologies. Language is going to be used. Irrespective of language though, this matter is literarily unconceivable. The less stuff you make up about it, the better as it stands in the way of open investigation. It is false that enlightenment is a process, a place, a state, a perception, an emotion, or an attainment, as these are relative. The main selling point of any practice is the promise to get you there, and that place is presently unknown to you. Whatever you conceive of enlightenment -- ideas, images, fantasies -- is false and not it. No practice can get you there. Ultimately, you are conscious -- and to the degree to which you are -- or not, no matter your ideas on this subject. I know this doesn't sound like good news. I'm saying there's nothing you can do within the dream to wake up. You can't manipulate your way into enlightenment. You'd be using dream stuff as a way to wake up, so to speak. Despite this, waking up is paradoxically possible for you. It's possible for you to become conscious of your nature and that of existence.

Nonsense. Of course you can.

@Water by the River Your posts are grounded on too much hearsay and external references imo.

There are not two truths. Use and value relate to you, not to what's true. Want to know it irrespective of what it does for you.

Genuine inquiry starts from scratch. It is an open investigation. Avoid making conclusions and speculating. If it's not possible, why contemplate in the first place? Realizing the absolute should be held as a real possibility for you. Apart from that, remain open and want to know it.

Why do think alcohol is needed in the first place in order to make friends? That's a false assumptoin.

Hearing that the truth might be useless doesn't sit well with our ideals about it. It undermines meaning. You think that enlightenment will improve your experience. Maybe it also brings freedom, among other things. But these are side-effects. Let us just want what's true.

What are you doing then? This is what the work is about. A concept is a concept. You must know permanently, so to speak. This isn't a state, though. Perceptive abilities remain the same. Your experience of yourself, the world, others and emotions remains largely the same, except that now you are free from them. You can be bored and enlightened. It's clear to me you're holding some ideal about this. Monks experience despair, desire, jealousy, joy and pain. Awakened warriors throughout history killed people. Enlightened people aren't suddenly able to walk on water. If you cooked amazing omelets before enlightenment, after it you would still be able to do so. See? Solutions to what? What is self-serving might conflict with what's true.

That's what I'm getting at. Enlightenment isn't a process.

What is a tool for?

A tool for what? No practice, technology nor tool can possibly produce or lead to enlightenment. They can help calm, focus, open and master the mind, facilitating insights. Contemplation is what you do while becoming conscious.

What has been verified? What are you conscious of? What's enlightenment?

Not likely. Again, we don't know what it is. Let's not presume that awakening is X or Y, remain open and contemplate. Think of infinity. Mind can't think infinity. All it will come up with is "lots and lots." That's my main point. This matter is not graspable. No tool or technology will solve that dilemma. They are different matters. Inventions are relative and have an influence on that domain -- perception and experience. The realization of the absolute is untouchable by anything you can think of. It's like trying to wake oneself up by drinking coffee within a dream. Why hasn't an enlightenment pill been invented throughout human history? It's you. Intermediaries are not direct.

Let's get enlightened first and avoid speculation.

I don't place that much importance on teachers and teachings. By necessity, I investigate from scratch. You're projecting here. Well, if it's a conclusion, it is a grounded one. Are you perhaps angry because enlightenment ideals are being threatened by that assertion? I haven't said I'm enlightened. As most people in the "spiritual" terrain, I'm talking out of my ass: from hearsay, impressions, beliefs, and in this case, from the memory of a couple glimpses. Survival and truth are completely different pursuits. The truth is useless. And there are no requisites to awakening. The only thing you need is getting you. Luckily, you are already you. Consciousness is needed.