Matthew Lamot

An hour a day of work? An hour a day will do nothing more than relax your body. People who become enlightened (and there are few) have had nothing short but an absolute burning desire to give up everything they have for freedom. That means even their own mind and everything they think life is supposed to be about. People from all over the world travel to spots where gurus have lived and self-inquire all day and still don't become Self Realized.. A hour a day...?

Self-Realized people are not afraid of death. There is no death, it's a concept

I heard Setephen Wolinsky mention that when you become Self-Realized you won't rid yourself of ALL of your vasanas (tendancies of mind that keeps the mind in a dualistic state), some uncooked seeds will still sprout no matter what, and will still drive you to do what the vasana desires. So, yes, you can be permanently Self-Realized and still be doing whatever you're here to do. Just don't expect to have any control over it.

@isabel Also isabel, while you are away from this situation I have some advice for your healing. Become aware of your own desires for safety, respect, love...whatever is there inside you, that is not currently being done for you from people on the outside. Admit those desires. Then understand that you are already full, non dual, limetless and that nothing that ever happened to you in life has ever changed you. Contemplate this, and contemplate that because you dont already believe that you are limetless being, your mind creates all sorts of desires for you to get resolved from the outside (love, attention, respect etc etc...) If you stop chasing the things you desire, and instead let your attention rest inside your awareness, the wants will slowly subside and you will begin to heal and your mind will start to realize that you are already whole and that nothing from the outside can add anything to you. Try it out

You must not get involved in this, you cannot do anything about it. One of the things a mother like this knows is even if they do lose the battle for a family member, in the process they have caused so much misery and anxiety because of the struggle that is enough for them to get their desire for power met. They need it because their desires getting met for them means emotional regulation, which means that their agitated mind only seems to let up when getting their desires met from the outside. So why give her the satisfaction of draining YOUR energy as well as your sisters? This might sound cold hearted, but if you analyse what Im saying closely you will find that it is now in your best interest to cut this bullshit out of your life completely so you can heal. You can't control your mum, you cant control your sister. And as painful as it might be to sit back and watch your sister be manipulated, the more you fight this the more energy you will waste and your mother knows it! Be unconcernd. Let it happen, and be centred in yourself and your life, living your life, plugging the hole in your mind that was draining your self worth. Fill up self worth again and be a good example for your sister. If she is wise she will come to you because that's where the sanity is. (Talking from personal experience)

Enlightenment means you ARE reality. You ARE the essence of experience, not an experience, and not an experiencer.

@How to be wise Is he enlightened? How do you know he is Self-Realized? He might not be, because he might have been exposed to corrupt versions of the teachings that were corrupt even in their homeland hundreds of years before they came to the west.

What about people who know that eating MacDonnalds is going to kill them? So they move off the Big Macs and start eating salads. This is called experience. Imagine if we tried to take in everything as equally valid? Our brains couldnt handle it. And our brains are not designed for it either. Open mindedness is about trying new things, and seeing if it works. If it doesn work, then throw it away. Also, when you understand the vasanas, you will realize that open-mindedness as a dogma is a compensation for a vasana that goes something like: I'm not good enough the way I am, so I must be good, or a saint in order to compensate. This is not real open mindedness, it is an over compensation. But none of you know that, because you dont have the correct teachings.

No. Shinzen Young said that! But it's been parroted here across the forum. The forum where not parroting is allowed ! Knowledge is the fastest way to enlightenment. Contemplate this. Advaita say's you are limitless. So try to find something that is limitless, whatever you find, it cannot be you.

No. If people could come up with Self Knowledge by themselves, do you not think everybody would be enlightened by now? This path is not obvious. And it's not about not knowing who you are. It's the opposite, it is about understanding, and unless you are Self-Realized, this understanding will never come about through non dual experiences, because the one who is "experiencing" the non dual state is still the ego, a very subtle ego, but ego none the less.

You need to learn a practice called karma yoga, which will assist you in burning up your heavy vasana load so that you are able to naturally sit. The other thing is, if you want to become enlightened, and by the looks of it nobody in this forum does, you need to stop meditating and start doing a practice called self-enquiry. Self enquiry is taking your wandering I thought and letting it rest back into it's source. If you can hold the I thought in the source and the I thought no longer feels the need to extrovert, the Self will eventually pull it back into itself and destroy it forever. All that will remain is the Self. There is an ancient System called Vedanta and it's main practice is something called Self-Knowledge. This is the teaching that will, in addition to practical self-inquiry, bring about the undoing of ignorance by means of contemplating on the original non dual teachings. So, there is something to do, but the point is, is the path to liberation something you want to do with your time? Because only people who have a burning desire to understand who they are walk this path. Some food for thought, maybe, while you sit and do nothing ?

Good answer.

LOL

Interesting. I'm glad you rocked up Kenya, Im interested in finding out your insights on enlightenment and ego, if you want to share I am looking to learn.

@WhatAmI I delted it, sorry

@WhatAmI

@WhatAmI

@How to be wise

This guy does not sound Enlightened to me. He sounds like he had many binding vasanas that kept him in bondage to his desires. Now this raises the question in my mind, can there be such a thing as pseudo awakening? Where it's just a very shallow realization that there is nothing right or wrong? Because this bloke here sounds like he was doing just that, still a slave to his binding vasana while pretending on the level of mind that there was nothing wrong with his blatant attachment to objects? This is what I don't understand about some of these definitions of enlightenment. Enlightenment is the same, always has been the same because there is only One Self. And from what I understand a person who is actually liberated means they are liberated from bondage to the objects of the world because the objects actually hold no inherent value.

I think, if you can be sure that you can give the child the best you can and if you want a child to make a conventional home with the right partner, then why not? It's a chance for a person to realize an existence. Perhaps even Self Realization (if that is their karma). But without getting too much into SR, let's not forget that life as an individual is meaningful too, like I say under the right conditions. Ultimately you will never know whether it is the right thing to bring a child into the world. If you dont mind me saying, reading your posts I would say that you personally need to do some work in getting your own purpose handled, as you seem to be an intuitive, independent thinker who is searching, looking for answers, perhaps a cultural creative? And I dont mean to label you, this is just what I see, a deep thinker with a deep emotional being asking the "big" questions while trying to make a life with men, politics, morality. Is your line of questioning a moralistic one? Natural too? Both/and, beautifully complex and highly cognitively developed. Then there may be no real answers for you. Just more thinking, which is fine. This is you?

Also, you are female, and females prefer demonstration and experiences, tokens of appreciation. Men are wired differently, we are more dry, logical, we sometimes expect that dry verbal expressions are enough. Maybe you are kinesthetic too and need touch and feel over conversation? These may be worth considering#1

I'm going to reply to you person to person here. Some of the advice you might get here is maybe a projection, you heard the saying "when youre a hammer, everything else looks like a nail"? Ya! It's not because you lack self love that you want to be valued, it is because you are a person, and persons who feel themselves to be valuable EXPECT to be treated in accordance with their worldview, and if your worldview is that you are valuable and you want to be loved and cared for then that is correct that when your most intimate friend is not showing you love it WILL feel bad. You are normal. Low self esteem means you would be in a rage and create all kinds of drama even if you DID get the appreciation you deserve, because low self esteem people cannot see how they are loveable and create more of what they feel see and experience. Transactions are MIND GAMES in order to covertly get another person into a drama, BUT what YOU are doing is healthy psychology! So you are doing fine! My advice is ask your partner for what you desire from him, get romantic now and again, stimulate his own romantic heart too and get him in the mood for love and appreciation. I don't know how long you have been together, that is not my business, maybe there is some stagnation in the relationship and things are getting routine based?

You see, in the old days of the Upanishads, most students were guided by a teacher, a teacher who was qualified to teach. It was a real tradition. Students had to practice a long time for Non-dual teachings, because their minds had to be ready to accept this experience so that it transformed into body wisdom rather than cognitive wisdom. Some people had to practice 12-15 years before they were allowed in on non dual. It was kept secret. Now, in this day of New Age bastardization and compulsive shallow congnitive Absolutization of the Relative, all that meaning has been lost and re-labelled "dogma". Everything now is dismissed as "dogma". This is innocent, but it is also ver ignorant. This happened because people listen to teachings that confuse relative and absolute and throw out the baby with the bathwater and screw themselves and the path because of the BELIEF that anything relative and meaningful is just "dogmatic". This is the problem here in these forums and in the New Age. It is the capitalist "quick fix" anybody can become "enlightened" fad of weekend Satsang. It's turned into like going to Church, except at least in organized religion you have some respect and reverence for relative duality! Now days the non-duality scene it just a big lie. So if you buy into the New Age lie, you will become an Absolutist who just walks around policing the language world and calling everything dogma and ego, but with no real understanding or transformation under their belt to back this up. Its just more ego pretending to be open minded.

A great pointer is if a teacher treats you like you are already the Self, but also has a substantial teaching and not just an intellectual wearing down of your dualistic POV. You should experience a massive sense of relief with a teacher who doesn't utter nonsense like "ego" and "dogma". Then in my opinion you are onto something. If nihilism creeps in, and its always "you" who are the problem, along with the resulting depression, confusion, limitation, contraction, all culminating on the verge of giving up, then this is not a good teacher. Well, it's the right teacher for your current karmic situation, but like always, in the relative world there is such a thing as a "good" teacher, and a "good" student will attract a "good" teacher. Real Advaita teachers don't just teach "anybody" - it's interesting, because the tradition (and any other solid non-dual tradition) has a mysterious way of keeping unqualified people OUT. Qualified teachers attract qualified students, and there becomes this bond between the perfect match. But, if you are a dreamer then life will quickly let you know that this is not the place for you at the moment. It's almost like that cheesy "New Age" teaching that life delivers exactly what you need in the moment, and for you to burn your karma you must accept it as a gift without trying to change the environment, you go with it, but you still manifest, you still try because if you give up that is just resignation and not acceptance and grace. Not true student is ready for Self Inquiry if they are merely resigned and nihilistic. It should be a feeling of "I'm now ready to do this". You will mutually know if the situation is going to work between you and your teacher, because you will be compatible with each other. If your karma is bad then you will bring a teaching into your life that reflects that. If you are confused you will get more of the same, until you learn. Learn to listen to life and what it's telling you. Then when you are ready you will be ready to seriously look at what works, and do the work of translating your spiritual experiences into knowledge that transforms the whole being. If you are a quick fix person, you will attract Jed Mackenna et all. Vedanta is the pathless path. Unfortunately for the post-modernists out there who feel the need to re-interpret everything to suit their "non dogmatic" ego, the "Pathless Path" has only ONE TRUE meaning. Pathless means that in Non Dual terms you are always here, reality is no-dual. But it also respects DUALITY and there is a path for the Jiva, and it is a long one. Slow, steady and dedicated wins the race.