Sri Ramana Maharshi

amen. Ever had enjoyable conversation ruin a perfectly good Insight? Make one distinction and the gates of h... PS: This luckily can't be off topic :o, but remember after your 1st 5me0 gig you said, "How could such a substance exist?" What about countering with, "How could it not?"

This is so true. You can't just ride across in the boat, asleep in the bow.

Everyone: A few weeks ago I made a run of some pretty scathing and barbed posts. No excuse. I was lonely on the path and looking for fellowship. Regular old monkey stuff, but here there's no excuse for things like hurting feelings or worse yet scaring off or discouraging younger folks from the most rewarding but challenging persuit within or outside of life itself. Mr. Gura said, "The horrid times are the best of times [for development]." but we must strive to prevent our defilements from leaking out and damaging others (whether you believe in such things as others/defilements or not). What I'm learning is that honest irresponsibility is still irresponsible and it has kamma (if you believe there are such things as "actions" and such). If anything, the need for not only a few little insights, but also the notion that transformation is a valuable tier of growth has been reinforced. This forum has a nice bumper crop of "beginner's mind" and we all need more of that....especially myself. Thank you and no need to accept any apology, but I can only hope it is witnessed. I just want to contribute...and share...and learn, and it is my dream that some day, i might point in some direction that could provide some much needed peace for a bunch of impermanent sensations. Here's hoping you all find relief from the pain of falsely perceiving duality. ...or worse yet, oscillation. -

You too!

Awesome. But then on another level, try and point to anything at all and see if you are pointing to somthing that is not ego. In the practice here, it's simple. Two states - Either experience is in story (ego) or mindfulness (apprehending every single vibration of reality in the present moment). Some of the mentioned posts in the apology were penned while the mind was unconsciously driven by a delusive state, straight up. But the love never left, and it was kismet that this little dharma drama teased out some of the real Jedi here. Sorry for all the rambling, for those who haven't the patience or reading comprehention (joke). Wait a minute...we're on Leo's forum here, the dude of 2.5 hour videos about the same stuff all the other videos are about....which could be said by some Rinpoche using a single Sanscrit word like Shunyata for example. Ok it's Infinity grounded in Nothing. What's the urgency, emergency? You're done, cooked!? Enjoy fresh veggies -Namaste

Yes. For sure. Some of the sensations which imply "needs" upon deeper investigation, reveal their utter emptiness. I find this *very* freeing and that goes the opposite direction of the delusive forces that lead to wanting to feed off of acting like an ass. Greed, Hatred, and Delusion don't arise until you first start imaginin'

You too! That I know, and thank you for having to courage to embody and speak of it. May my heart explode into limitless abodings of Equanimity and also at times, Agape for yourself and all 'others'. For real 100 points for Gryffindor. -100 for Slytherin.

The apology was sincere, and at least useful for this VR setup here (body). I had bought into some emotional content and it slipped by mindful observation and out onto the keyboard where it could form into the shape of intellectual bullying and broad denigration, such as "This forum seems to be for young seekers who are mostly concerned with kicking the proverbial tires of realization, and working it into their lives, rather than actually realizing that it is all about ending said process. ...and I came across as a dick about it, due to 40+ years of sketchy socialization and arrogance hiding behind an honesty which was sometimes pure in content but tends to be used socialy more like a spiked shield. But this isn't really much about the psychological domain. There is overlap, but what's important here is that this forum is useful for everyone in different ways. I respect that and appreciate the diverse fresh experiences of others that can be found here. A thought arose along the lines of, "Boy, it'd be a shame if I shit all over a place where there are plenty of cool people to test out and hear neat ideas from in real time. That simple. Seeing the true nature of the personality can be shocking. I don't have to blab about this as those who know are still being shocked. Some folks really get a drive to transform and others just don't give a damn, because the personality is part of what you are being, not doing...and changing that activity is impossible until it isn't. Even then it can be tricky as hell. There's a huge body of work there, hard work. If you want to hear a person talk about transformaton with real skill, I would suggest reading Ralston's Persuing Consciousness, as he has his communication game together. Thanks for [all] your kind works most of all. Namaste.

Good stuff. Don't be shocked if, after some halmark change in perception/being that you plant a flag in and consider "Awakening", that every bit of the Ego is still there, it has just been seen for sure and forever that you are not it or its mischief. You can't be butthurt and hold that mental object of no-self simultaneously, but there is already a strong mental program to get "butthurt" which may not drop instantly. Depends on your particular shape. Mine suffers from over-research/over self-education (sound familiar - sorry again Leo) which deepens loneliness and energizes existential fear of non-existance. This is a realization-stopper when grasped and is major. It's why my character gets long winded. It's very babbling is largely (or entirely) the painful insistance of delusive perpetuity. The reciprocate of which is the notion that if one shuts up, one doesn't exist, which on the Absolute scale, is true in either case any fucking way. What's important is that this existential fear is infinitely subtle (fractals, remember) and is the very factor, I believe, or the primary culprit that creates "Eternity View", a notion that there's a God out there right now, separate from you, who will take you ego away to a heaven to live forever. (sidestepping the fact that your "ego" is just a transient sensation which never existed past present or future thus could never go to heaven or meet nonexistent "God") Thats some trappy shit. Mindfullness will keep on seing the mischief of the ego, and the stronger programs will have to be worn through like old socks. But then maybe you'll attain suddenly to dropping into a fractal of pure non-duality while the body walks off into the sunset (highly unlikely I'd say). It's your path and your story, but sometimes you have to feed the bull's ass too! You gotta let a monkey do some monkey stuff, but I prefer to not let it fuck with other worlds. Or you could make your world's rules be such that there can be literal saints, and you aren't Enlightened until you and everyone else apprehends your every sensation and action as resplindant perfection. Your work is cut out for you. Also, the fear of longwindedness that is trendy online in spiritual circles is just Laxity, Torpor, Laziness in intellectual form, yet one of the good old standard 5 meditational hindrances we've known about for years. Nay Millenia.

I admit preferentially enjoying the posts from people who seem to be really doing the work, because as you know the work is lonely as fuck...by definition, and if it's not, that might be a very good feedback that you aren't in fact getting your seeing claspers any closer to grabbing the ass of the bull. Shit, a spontaneous contemplation occured right now that resulted in more Compassion toward Leo, and I'll out it before it drops from the mind: I've been wondering how he's avoiding the mind-fuck of the 2nd character he's created with the video "Heeey" guy. There's that cartoon, and then there's Leo Gura (or whatever his name is). It would be easy to get confused after a time. There's this BBC documentary about Hunter S. Thomson where he mentions that his story caracature Raool Duke is based on him, but it was (according to him) his base personality taken to gross/reductio ad absurdum proportions. I think Thomson is rolling a J and mixing a drink simultaneously while he's describing this in the documentary. Eventually he spills half the sack in the yard and starts almost crying. When he recovers he comments that everyone is so identified with Duke that they think Thomson IS Duke. Then he babbles a bit to the effect that he's not even sure anymore whether or not Duke should live and he should kill off Thomson or Vice Versa. This was a powerful pointing out. Most folks I talked to missed it. I know it's his hobby/job, but I don't know how you do it Leo. It's hard enough reading a bunch of books and keeping the mind pure for the work, let alone becoming a quasi celebrity and having to deal with *that* mental object.

Yep. Once this experience experiences itself there is no going back. +++

Nobody was mad brother! Here I am looking outside at a resplindant beautiful day, death in the next room, life in this one. It's all good.

Uh, all human beings are pansexual. There will be contrary opinions, but I doubt there will be many from those who have attained Bodhi/RIght Gnosis/Self.

I have seen that when you are caring for an elderly person 24 hours a day, busy meeting with health care workers 24/7 and exposed to a dying person, it can be quite irrelevant if a thought about beating-off/sex even occurs. Of course sexuality to me means all the usual feelings plus the added amazing closeness I feel with my wife of 20 years. I'm in my 40's and my sex drive is as strong as ever, and my wife and I masturbate some, and tell each other about it. or not. It just isn't a big deal and there is no shame or paranoia. You know: L I B E R A T E D. Hell, I forgot to fap for 3 weeks and didn't notice. Try attaining the 4th Jhana really hard, coming back to post meditation, and then dropping into Equanimity at the senses right at the point of orgasm. Do this after a several week no fap. Now you are doing spiritual work (highest yoga tantra using imaginary Consort). I did this about a year ago (first time through DIssolution) and the state that resulted dropped me into a Formless Realm Samadhi in seconds, fully disgoined from the body as an anicca wave passed over awareness. Big big Jhana and possibly the mind crossed Udayabaya Nyana (again) in those few seconds - minute. At first it was pretty terrifying, and a vedana will arise that says you are about to feel Infinite/limitless pain in your prostate/urethra area, but you don't get chopped in half, you go to ultimate bliss, and you may see the 5 aggrigates flash and the body go all the way numb as in sleep paralysis experiences/hypnogogic. In these situations very little liquid actually comes out to none at all. Unless the balance isn't there. I don't use this as a practice, it was just something I stumbled upon the first time through Udayabaya Nyana and it started being "available" or my mind made the idea in Dissolution. I think That nyana actually opened some swiss cheese holes that allowed me to see that Shinzen Young's video on this same phenomenon was available to this practice and 4 or 5 times it has happened, leaving some micro pops of ultimate insight in its wake. It's a scary technique at first -- But the fear of overwealm is a bluff of the body, just as the fear of letting go into Jhanic Absorption or VOID itself. I do not think this would have been likely for my body had I not at least had a mastery of the 4 Rupa Jhanas at a non-absorbed to occationally popping into "gone". Metta. PS: I'm 44 and have dated many women growing up and have had lots of relationships and casual sex along the way. Even tried to try guys but didn't really ever get that far. Never found a guy I liked I guess. In any case, every women I have ever met masterbated, and the only ones who did not had severe repression/martyr/victim complexes. I have had those in my past, and they affected me sexually as well. There were times when I would gladly go down on a girl and perform oral sex, yet I was insecure about getting a blowjob. That's bad neurosis. Masterbation can actually increase sexual performance by facilitating one to become more sensitive to one's own needs with regard to the body and the mind/emotions which arise in dependance. What important, I humbly think, is that one is always honest about purpose in the present, as some smart guy up there said. If it's unconscious distraction, it's time wasting. Unless you decided that it would be a worthy purpose and there was no regret/shame upon completion. But then it would not be an unconsciousness since you would have noted "voilition" at the fore. When I was younger and the internet was nonexistant, nude pics and video were hard to get. They were real easter eggs. You had to search BBS's and really wait 1 hour to download some Samantha Fox picture if you were underage. It was a coming of age to discover all those things, but this supersonic binary age tends to rush and cheapen, so now even human communication has become tacky and totally contrived, like our cartoon political leaders. Take 5 --- Fap 'em if ya got em. (but by all means if you have seen some Truth that says for you "No Fap" == Nibbana/Or whatever you are after...then please PM me. May you all have at least the super-subtle post orgasm Equanimity and hopefully much much much more. In refuge to the Triple Gem.

...and yeah, one of the biggest personal, yes personal reasons for persuing vehicles toward Enlightenment and Transformation was to enumerate and be freed from the suffering of my own abusive human patterns, and in so doing engender the same for the world. It can be done, as some on here seem to be touching, and maybe see way more than "I".

@spicy_pickles It would be great to hear that you managed to leave. It is usually the right thing to do at the outset and in general. I suffered from several abusive relationships, the first of which was with a girlfriend who was abused by her mother. The way she identified with "love" within her sense of self was feeding off the cathersis from the remorse her mother would feel after beating her and locking her into a closet for while afterward. Her mother would then open up the closet and they would cry together and feel better again. This catalyzed the cycle of abuse, where the only time she felt worthy of love was post-violence and so would pair up with men whom she could provoke. Unfortunately I had problems, like a Severus Snape complex of being picked on as a kid - intellectual, nerd, etc. So I wound up retreating into intellectualism, feeling a contracted ego, etc. This cycle was easily picked up by my ego over the years and sadly was brought, through my body, to other relationships in the "future". Only after seeing the links of dependant origination in real time (and now in this very arising) do I understand the chain of events that would flag "vulnerability, fear of loss of security/existential flaw moha, etc." and I would go into animal mode and even memory would go, while I lashed out pushing or grappling and victim who had the misfortune of being one of the beings I loved the most. What is most important in these issues, after ensuring the immediate safety of the transitive "victims", is to understand why a man or a woman would come to a place where they would be appearing to originate abuse to another body in the first place, or at least how this process takes place algorithmically. At least on a forum such as this. But then I have ventured outside the confines of "growing-a-pair", or well... It takes a big pair to leave an abusive situation, which is also tantamount to emotional security, nesting, etc. But it takes a much bigger pair to look into yourself (no one else can do it for you) and determine what those factors are that trick you into acting out in belief of the defiled thoughts and emotion and gut assumptions that launch these propensities in the first place. My 2 cents.

@Saumaya And you can keep adding great salient features to that list for eternity forever, and they would probably all be very compelling. Also, everything on the list (as you've already seen with some facets) is just as compelling on the other side of the Tao from where you have it on the list, and just as "true." ...and that's not necessarily a bad thing at all IMHO.

It seems like some people have great stability with their Insights and perceptual changes that come from their work, while others are more unstable. You've got genetic variations, Impermanence itself (if you map that sort of thing), and life experience...and every other thing "the universe" is doing to affect your perception or worse yet, conception of how your new View works for you. And we all believe too much garbage from our alleged "mind" still.. Like what I'm about to say: Regardless of what view(s) you hold about the nature of individuals, relationship, or The One, Nothing, Emptiness, Shunyata, [or whatever]...there seems to be, varying mental factors, and we manifest together and discuss stuff like, "the practice here", or "your practice"...indicating groups of patterns which can be mapped as mental factors that affect tech like meditation or self enquiry (the goto technique for lots of folks here, nice!). I don't know about others, but it seems like we make leaps in perception sometimes or the ways in which we hold reality (more selfless??), and that this can be freeing. Maybe after getting up from a Contemplation or Vipassana sit we notice something drastic. Sometimes these leaps peak then plateau for a while, or even trough back down...only to arise again, or perhaps they don't. Maybe they were just "retreat mind" showing a preview of development to come. (this is nice, I learned to be grateful, not disappointed) All I know is even some of our favorite (measure your big Reality stick with this) lists bend to the flow of the universal coming and going of what is seen as temporal, including the interface we use to experience...for those of us still stricken with dependance on "the body." Sorry for the rambling delivery. I suck at forum exchange and have lowzy socialization. 4 decades + of humanity and probably an infinity prior has not helped one whit. Bottom line - Make lists, have fun, but map trap, always there and gets more subtle the deeper you go. Worms its way into the most ephemeral of fractally complex horizontal labyinthine domains. My rhythm is this: Get into a tech practice, go nuts....get simple, silent.....stagnate....get tech...repeat. Every now and then check to see if life is getting simpler, freer, and less personal...joyful! ....if you are interested in such goals. Cheers.

This is an excellent book. I have read it at least 4 or 5 times through and return whenever the Dukkha Nyanas are hammering. Really was walking from one side of the room to another for hours for a few weeks, intentions did not connect to actions and they were disjointed. I had no initiative and suddenly all purposeful since of ambition for personal projects died. It has never returned with any of the spirit of its former vigor (and now personal ambition is seen as just a 99% stressful mental factor, choice). Many spiritual teachers just don't prepare us for the rapid renunciation that can occur post direct consciousnes/Insight. The "uncensored" part of this work really speaks with specificity to this. I was helped greatly the first "empty cup" run through the pages of this short book. This book kicks ass. I bought into a lot of content floating up a few weeks ago and was a big asshole on several topics I wantonly hijacked on here. I hope any hurt feelings can forgive me. I give not a damn about any reputation, and luckily there isn't credibility to ruin. I'm just like all the rest of you guys. It would suck to be on a Leo sized platform. Enlightenment threads thru a lonely needle eye already. Productive thread idea...

This forum is a Seeker's Sandbox it seems. Too bad. Luckily there *are* other forums where real replicatable attainments are discussed both rationally and magically in due course. Finding Sangha here is like looking for hen's teeth in outer space. ....really disappointing.

If you practice Yoga, development just happens. You don't actually attain or do anything. It's just language. My mind has never been less certain in all my 44 years. The only thing that is certain is that the Absolute will forever be unknown and uncertain. That is paradox you can sleep on. If you think I'm "right" then we're both "wrong", right?

I will do so, and thanks. I can't do anything in a vacuum and your positivity makes all the difference Interdepedance/Co-arising....etc. Tadyata gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi so vah!!!

Nah, I just had an ideal of what this forum could be (I was seduced by Leo's skill as an avid reader and memorizer), and grasped that ideal. Then when reality tore it away I grabbed the carrot of suffering. It's always an option to suffer regardless of your level. Freedom. My reaction and happiness is always and only 100% my responsibility.

Prolly true. It's been a rough week as I have helped hospice come in and set up equipment for my wife's father's death from stage 4 COPD, and simultaneously my own father has run out of treatment options on his brain tumor. Still, as Leo did masterfully admit once, "The Horrid times are the best of times, and that's where the real Insight is!" We'll survive, and the work will continue for eternity. Thanks for the kind and wise support! Metta

I have contentment in This Very Arising. That's what every aspirant is looking for. On forums, I am looking to find others who are disciplined (by Eastern, more than lazy American standards) and willing to work hard every minute for This. You can't practice the dhamma in line with your Western life, you have to bend your Western life to practice the Dhamma in line with the Dhamma. It seems many on here want to just do "their own thing" and be selfish in every way. They will never see reality as some have.