harisankartj

This was really well written . i knew that story telling enriches our lives but damn...

Mom and Dad. Everybody comes second. With that said i gotta say Siddharta Gautama to me is just one bad-ass motherfucker.IMAGINE! He had everything in his life. He lived the life of a king! Food,company,women ...he had it all! And he decided to leave them all for rigorously finding the truth through asceticism. WOW....just imagine somebody in our time leaving the WHOLE of human relationships to do that kind of stuff..wow... This is cus instead of viewing him as "god" i viewed him as an ordinary human who did extraordinary things....and that is really awe-inspiring. But of course Heroes are everywhere! This is just my opinion of who a hero is.

@Ilya I can validate your statement about awareness from my experience.Yeah,when awareness increases thoughts seem to naturally fade out.As for the theory that levels of awareness are like a pyramid...well I'm not that advanced in meditation too so I can't say it's a 100 percent true or false. it might be true.

@ajasatya Thanks for the reply. I think i understand now. @Toby even though its not a "high" i am searching for, its true that i seek some form of satisfaction in life. The satisfaction of "subtle experiences" are kinda new to me,hence my topic.

In the "fundamentals of self-actualization" page( the "Start Here" tab in actualized.org) , Leo states that one of the biggest traps of this work is "Valuing and pursuing gross experiences vs subtle ones." What can we call gross experience ? What can we call subtle experience ? Are the pleasures of subtle experience truer and more long lasting than the "gross" ones? Appreciate any insights on this.

Hopefully this will help out some of ya.

You are a product of what you experience , What you experience is not up to you to choose. Hence "free will" cannot even exist? Because what the ACTUAL HELL IS WHAT U CALL FREE WILL?!! Suppose you were born in a foreign country to foreign parents. Your whole worldview will stem from that localised experience. You imagine "I like food of my culture. I like clothes and music of my culture. Others i may like but they are still foreign.This is what i like.I seem to have the power to choose experiences that fit my agenda. AND hence i have free will. " But did you choose what type of music,people,clothes,food and experiences that you like? If so then that would mean even if you were born in another country and lived all your life there..you would still be inclined to like the type of culture that you currently live in. Did you choose to read this post or were you led to read this post? If you did choose it then that would mean even if Leo hadnt come up with actualized.org you would still be able to read this post? Because guess what, free will means "you get to choose what you experience" ,"you get to choose your action" ALL OF IT. ALL your life ( mine included) is a reaction and embodiment of local experience . Humans have been blessed with an intelligent mind which enabled him to SEEMINGLY change reality.But you see you ultimately didnt choose the mind.Going meta and meta ,it is understood that nothing has ever been "your" choice ...Its simply reality "reality"-ing.The fact that humans have been blessed with the mind and intellect to manipulate reality is EXACTLY whats creating this notion of "free will" but this notion is simply just that , a notion. PS FEEL FREE TO GIVE YOUR COUNTER ARGUMENTS.I WOULD REALLY LOVE TO PUT MY INSIGHT TO THE TEST.

@Nahm Okay my english is not so good ,so i hope you understand what i am trying to point to here.The fact that you choose different things than those around you is because of the fact that the it feels good for your body mind to choose some things which others don't . What i was saying is that it is not in your power to choose what things that you come to like . Say,you choose vegan diet while those around you choose to eat meat. The fact that those people seem to "choose meat" is actually an illusion.In their unconsciousness,they see meat gives stimulation which excites the body so they go for meat.But notice their "choice" of eating meat is dependent on the fact that the body(the taste) was stimulated on eating meat. But let's go meta. Did they choose what the body was supposed to want to get excited?Imagine if somebody was born into another humanoid species that , due to their body configuration , got excited when eating rocks.Then that person would decide to choose to eat rocks because that's what making it "excited". And you say " Hey but im not unconscious, im vegan and i consciusly choose to avoid eating meat" .You are right .YOU DO GET TO CHOOSE ..Since you are more conscious than others,you are aware of what is happening and to an extent you are capable of "choosing ",But this choosing is limited YEah...im saying free will IS relative because its a concept the mind created to make sense of the world so as to be able to change it to fit the needs of an individual. YEAP,THATS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS TRYING TO SAY . If you ask a highly developed monk "is there free will?", he will answer in the ultimate meta level since he has dedicated his whole life to truth. He will then say "no there isn't." It's actually pretty nuanced how the conversion from "insight into the nature of something through direct experience/direct seeing" to "interpretation and ramifications of the empirical knowledge by human mind" . The place,the context where im coming from might be different from the place where you're coming from . i made this claim of "no free will" in the highest meta level i could possible get to as of now. And your questions of "but dont i choose this thing that thing" are valid indeed ... but they cant be given an absolute answer SOLELY because of the fact that the nature of insights is not to " be an answer to a question" but to simply reveal what is true

@Joseph Maynor That meta-awareness of perception helped,thanks @Prabhaker Thanks for that insightful story

WARNING : Inexperienced use of the english language ahead. @Nahm Sorry for the miscommunication , I meant that the body-mind(especially the mind) was a product of experience.Awareness certainly isn't. I am talking about how ordinary lives of humans seem to work. Before i had any experience...I was not even aware of the "being" , everything was simply ,IS. About the food you like,well you are right,my example to show that " our tastes for things is not determined (in the meta level) by us " was not good enough. What i said about free will is that there is no ULTIMATE free will. Of course you can come up with an agenda on how certain aspects of your life should be.What i am saying is what you PUT ON YOUR AGENDA is of course shaped by experience (feelings of happiness cannot be on the agenda because that is said to be the default state - any material object or any specific circumstance or experience is whats USUALLY on most people agenda WHICH leads to the feeling of happiness.... what i was trying to point to here is that nobody chooses what the mind chooses to want in order to feel peaceful...there is reliance on memory of past experience,speculation of future, the body's needs etc. But yeah in ordinary life i guess there SEEMINGLY exists a faculty which enables us to choose stuff but i wouldnt call it free will. The culture example too seemed to go way off what i initially wanted to point to. Of course you wouldn't like a culture which indulges in activities that attack your well-being. This website here is the best choice , i agree. But in the BIIIIIIG PICTURE it seems more accurate to say that you and I and everybody were LED HERE .It just seems right . What i was trying to mean was that everything leads to everything (the cause and effect rule)...there can be no standalone entity with "free will" to say " okay i choose this to happen to reality, i choose this experience ,etc." As @Joseph Maynor rightly said What i was saying here is that we can think like " Oh man i mean.... i can choose to stand up from my seat anytime i want , doesn't that count for something?" BUT the REASON for you wanting to choose to stand up from your seat will always be an experience in the material world (physical and mental objects ) In the land of concepts which the mind has created certain paradigms can take higher ground than others but it's ALL based on the mind...which is ultimately realized to be only a tool which could aid survival and self agenda,nothing more. Notice @Nahm that i was talking about free will in THE META PERSPECTIVE . but my sloppy examples (which were intended to show how we are IN THE SYSTEM OF REALITY and never having a big choice or say on it) seem to have made it hard for discernment. No , i havent practiced meditation in a while actually and i am pretty guilty of that .I have a bunch of thoughts all the time but i try maintaining mindfulness . I cant say if i will reach a point of "non-reaction" because that would mean there would be a somebody not reacting ... that doesnt make sense .

Nowadays i feel like the entirety of sense perceptions i am feeling is fleeting.Like a dream. One moment i see an object next moment its gone...something else fills my field of perception like a sound. It all comes and it all goes. One moment i am listening to a soulful song and its making me feel VERY GOOD . Few minutes later i am aware that THAT MOMENT IS GONE . Just like a dream . So is my family,my friends , what i call "my life" JUST LIKE THIS MOMENT? A moment either feeling good or bad ... then it goes back to being normal... being nothing? I am just KINDA ..not really but KINDA UPSET bout this.And i wanna know if there is any way i could somehow "create sense perception" (I KNOW,ITS STUPID) And contemplating on this led me to question how EXACTLY something comes to existence in my field of perception.I mean COME ON!! You dont think its just random luck that i hear something or see someone! There is got to be SOMETHING AT THE BOTTOM!!!

@Nahm So ... what we call "objective reality" is INFINITE SENSE PERCEPTION?

@Nahm It goes against all the laws of the world where i am currently existing so ... i dont think thats possible

@Nahm idk really...i mean....it just came outta nowhere...

@Nahm Uhhh somebody paints it...?

@123456789 I checked on google and it showed that vasanas were something like desires. Do you mean that whatever sense perception takes place in my field of awareness does so because i have a desire for it?

This video is really "eye-opening" for anyone wanting to know objective reality. He says "we have not been evolved to view the world as it is,we have been evolved to view the world as its useful for us to see " .This can explain how our brain tricks us into thinking we have got reality figured out. Awesome talk,worth a watch.

You know and i know that all of us love to get high on music,video games and some of us,drugs. But as the sages and wise men tell,can meditation and contemplation really help one to never need ANY of this pleasures? if its possible ,then DAMN THOSE SAGES ARE BADASS. so the qn is .....IS IT POSSIBLE TO LIVE A LIFE WITHOUT DOPAMINE?

He makes a whole lot of sense. I guess what he is saying is that society never really acknowledges a kid's "life purpose" and his/her possible contributions to society. We tell kids "go to school,study to get a good job,marry and have kids and that's what life is about" of course in an indirect fashion. Society is not concerned with raising the kids' awareness of his/her position in the world and his/her place in this universe...what it means to be alive , what it means to be a functioning human being.. AND you can't blame society cus certain parts of the world still cant afford that . The real purpose of education seems to be lost too,which explains why kids arent motivated to go to school or learn.The norm of "study to get a job and gain financial freedom" seems like a negative motivation.but this is the paradigm that is being used most places. as of now i dont think this paradigm would change drastically but its still possible. That maybe why kids would rather waste time with their friends ,seek social approval, etc. and continue to adopt the thinking patterns their society has adopted. But you cant expect 14-year old kids to have life figured out. They WILL have to live through life and find themselves in order to know what their role in this world is.But it suppose that shouldnt take very long.I think it ALL comes back to not teaching kids to look within themselves beyond what has society has brought them up with. BUT then again,we are talking of 14 YEAR OLD KIDS..of course they are not mature. Its the autodidactic lifestyle that kids will love , just like Leo said in one of his blogposts. Helping all of them to implement that is quite the task but we can try. I really appreciate this guy's efforts, doing the survey and then spreading the message.Kudos to him!

@Leo Gura So is enlightenment actually having an insight into the nature of reality and recontextualising ordinary experience ? Sort of like "integrating into subjective experience and have ordinary(yet deeper) existence?" Does this mean (Since reality is said to be absolutely infinite) enlightenment work will go to infinity? How do i know im not living in a dream of an enlightened yogi capable of perceiving deeper realities?

When watching a movie its actually 1) light coupled with sound . 2) the subtitles agreeing with "what is being said" has no relationship.Just like how the word"cat" has nothing to do with the actual cat. when you close your eyes,there is no guarantee that there is anything there.Cause all "you" can ultimately rely on direct experience and in that moment which you close your eyes the world disappears.same goes for anything which is not in your direct experience in the now. 'Time' is actually a model which is used to process the information that arrives through the senses,and is a construct. The movement of objects and memory of the 'past' call for the need of a mental model based on an ungrounded assumption which can be used for manipulating reality for self survival and daily life needs. Just some i can think of which you probably know.hope these help

The realization of what Is. Since realization has no form people say it has no quality. its just realizing the whole of existence .The hollow man realizes its own hollowness to become THAT. At least thats what i think it is.

An example scenario: if pain is a projection does that mean even those who had to undergo physical torture (sorry for them) were suffering their own unconscious projections onto reality?

@Siim Land maybe im just demonizing dopamine instead of doing proper self inquiry and raise my consciousness... Thanks for your comment.

@nexusoflife Society does not seem to have developed itself to notice the importance of the topics (which you mentioned ) on a grand scale.Though not as deep as yours, i too have had some experiences of unity of being and it was just beautiful.You are right, Every human should be working towards living in this unity.