Echoes

First I want to say, that I have a strong desire to create a life that I want. I am currently in a stage where unresolved confusions seem to come back to me from the beginning of this journey of nonduality. They may seem infantile or like obvious self-sabotage, and maybe that is the case. But maybe I'm really not seeing something, and I think I would benefit if somebody is able to give me a new perspective. Point 1. is what is mostly confusing me. 1. This whole situation seems to be so absurdly relative. "Having life circumstances that I am not satisfied with and wanting to improve them" Why is this even a thing? Somehow I am. And then somehow there is a situation that someone wants to change. I don't even know why I am here or what this is, so how can I possibly know what's good for me, what I have to do, or what even is an improvement? Improvement based on what? Based on "This is not satisfying, there has to be something else"? But that's just a belief. This right here is all there is. There is only now. It's absurd to me to create something, when the basis of this whole "journey" of creating is so grotesque and mysterious as in: [somehow being somewhere and then somehow changing something to create pleasurable circumstances for someone]. How can I possibly know what is good for me? It doesn't seem to be a good idea to act with incomplete information. 2. This whole thing of optimizing life, having a life purpose, improving myself, staying healthy, seems like just a big pretending game. We pretend that there is a world. We pretend that there is a brain. We pretend that we are this body. We pretend to have free will. We pretend we know what is good and we and the "world" needs. We pretend we are on a journey to somewhere. Examples: The world is a thought story, yet one of the good options to create a good life seems to be to make an impact on the world. On what world?? Isn't it just pretending? Just like a kid pretends to be a fireman when playing with it's toys. Why nourish and optimize a "brain" if it doesn't exist? I don't try to optimize another made up organ. What is the difference between a complete made up organ, like "Unicornrainbow" and "Brain". If the brain REALLY(!) doesn't exist, why pretend that it does? We don't pretend that "Unicornrainbow" is an organ inside us. So "brain" seems to be there. And there seems to be a difference between a scientific established concept and a completely made up concept. Either the brain exist or it does not exist. The other option is silly: "It doesn't actually exist, but let's pretend that it exists because it exists somehow but doesn't actually" (????) So we pretend again. If I am really, really, really!! not this body. Why create good circumstances for this body? Why search a partner for this body? I'm not concerned about creating good circumstances for a unknown body in china, because I didn't identify with this unknown chinese body. But I identify with the body that is currently typing this text. Isn't it then the better way to completely disidentify with this body also and don't bother about anything anymore? Just completely not giving a fuck about anything anymore in a consequent way, even if it entails physical death. Wouldn't that be the more authentic option since this body is not me? I am aware that I am also this body, since I am everything. But thats hypocrisy to everyone coming with this argument. You care way more about the continued body which is appearing beneath you than any other body or thing. So it seems that this whole life is just farce. It's just pretending. Which isn't bad in and of itself. If you embrace it, it could actually be fun. So is this really the way? Pretending "as if" and then act "as if"? Embracing this dream, since it is all there is?

@Shin Man, it's a long time since I last watched this show

Thank you all @Galyna I believe that's what they call "Wu wei". Easier said than done, but I am trying to surrender more and more each day. I tend to overthink spontanious tendencies and come up with all sorts of rationalizations. But then the rationalizations and tensions are part of what reality seems to be doing too...quite paradoxical stuff. @Samra This reminded me on the quote of Kierkegaard: "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards". You are right, I have to learn to go more with the flow. @Leo Gura It is strange though. Being randomly dropped in a situation where we have to struggle for survival without ever having decided to want this. And then having to figure out a way in which this is best or even "artfully" done. Thats a little bit like a random person from the street who gets spontaniously kidnapped and thrown into a film set and is then asked to act a random role assigned to him. Thats why I seem to be only able to motivate myself at the moment to figure out what this whole thing here is. Just like the person from the street, who would probably ask himself "why did I got kidnapped and have to perform now?" instead of investing all his energy in acting as good as possible. @Socrates @MisterMan Good to see that there are others struggling with this too.

@Shin That's a good one. But it's also very easy for the ego to co-opt this. The ego wants to feel significant and indispensable through helping others. Theres a good Jed Mckenna quote about this: “Wake up first. Wake up, and then you can double back and perhaps be of some use to others if you still have the urge. Wake up first, with pure and unapologetic selfishness, or you’re just another shipwreck victim floundering in the ocean and all the compassion in the world is of absolutely no use to the other victims floundering around you.”

@Leo Gura It's not that I don't see that there are no real alternatives anymore once one fully grasps the significance of self actualization/personal development. I can never go back to the life of playing video games and eating junk food. My concern is with the more "basic" personal development stuff, which I seem to need most at the moment. Like creating a business, learning marketing, understanding how money works, creating a way to make money and all this stuff (maybe pickup, to get this area handled). I focused everything on Enlightenment/Psychology/Philosophy. And even though I need to figure some of this stuff out in my life, I can't find the drive to investigate my time in learning it somehow. Sometimes I think I'm deceiving myself with all this nonduality and the more theoretical stuff in order to avoid "real world" work.

@aurum That's what my feelings tell me too. I think this "taking it serious" part is one of the major benefits that comes with actually having lived in the assumption/perspective that all is not a dream and unreal. It's not "oh, now everything is unimportant and silly" but more like appreciating the value of human life in context with the new found freedom.

Maybe it's back from the month where he tried out the perspective of being a satan worshipper

-"Privately interact with everything as if it is trying to tell you the secret of your being absent" -"The one who strives to prove to the other that they are not crazy is the cause of the world’s misery. There is nothing but the madness of absurdly being alive for no reason" -"The clothes you need to cover your beauty are the expression of that beauty. Don’t just hide in rags. Wear them as if advertising how empty you are!"

Often, an unconscious belief when we think we can't be honest with certain people like our mother or family in general, is that they are so pathetic that they can't handle the truth. Stop thinking other people are so pathetic that they can't handle being told the truth.

@Elephant I had this a few times on LSD at the beginning of a trip. Like a dive into almost depressive heaviness that was dragging me down. But it was always just temporary before the typical uplifting LSD effects started.

I found this to be an interesting perspective on this whole "Law of Attraction" thing. He actually spent time in his previous years believing in the manifestation paradigm and practicing it.

@AleksM I'm not sure if re-naming the same feature would result in different emotional investment/reaction. The implied message is always "I like what you communicated there - here, have this {symbol of approval}". I wonder if a less serious {symbol of approval} would differ in emotional investment (altough probably not)...like a Banana for example. Collecting Bananas to rise in the hierarchy of apes. The ultimate chimpery lol. But then it's atleast more obvious that the "ego" side of this feature is not to be taken this serious, without losing the useful aspects of it.

@Leo Gura Yea, I thought the same. And it is my impression from his videos that Shunyamurti is also a dedicated reader and has done serious study in this field. Maybe a case of "Don't look for what they say. Look for what they do" I raised the same objection to the transmission of energy thing. I asked if it is not only a temporary glimpse like a psychedelic trip. This is what he answered: "Your speculation is incorrect. Working with a liberated sage is precisely not like taking an entheogen, for many reasons, and can indeed result in permanent liberation. Of course the seeker must be ripe and ready, courageous and determined, truthful and open-hearted. An authentic relationship with the teacher must be formed. It is this that makes the difference. Not only can the guide help you peel away all the ego defenses, while in the ordinary waking state, but the sage can enable you to hold the vibrational frequency of Self realization for long enough to burn away the old tendencies, fantasies, and unconscious ego structures and agencies. The guru can implant within your heart a power that, even if it does not activate immediately, will set subtle processes of transformation in motion. Regarding your assertion that it is difficult to find such a sage, I would reply that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Also, where there is a will, there is a way. Even if it involves a pilgrimage to another place, if it is a high enough priority, it will happen. Your spiritual destiny is in your own hands. Namaste, Shunyamurti" The devil's advocate would point out that he is saying this so that more people come to his Ashram But I never met a "sage", so I don't know what impact it can have.

I asked a "Guru" (Shunyamurti) this question some time ago. This is what he answered: "Dear Seeker: Your question brings laughter and sighs. You want a quick intellectual fix from books, and it is not to be had. If you come to our ashram, you will see that we have a large library filled with books on these subjects. And what we have is a drop from an infinite ocean of books. If you were to approach this from an earthbound academic frame of reference, you would discard all the pop psychology and new age spirituality books. You would immerse yourself in serious studies of psychoanalytic theory, from Freud to Klein to Bion to Lacan (and a very long list of other names in the field). Then you would enter the larger field of post-structural philosophy, which takes issue with the psychoanalytic paradigms. You would begin to study Derrida and deconstruction, Whitehead and process theory, Deleuze and immanence theory; then you would have to integrate all that with quantum physics, biosemotics, psychosomatics, information theory, and complexity theory. And all of that would not even get you to chakra four. Then you would pore over books on immaterialism, archetypes, interdimensionality, and every variety of metaphysical mapping. You would need to study pure mathematics, fractal theory, relativity, the enigma of time. After mastering all that, you would have to return to Eastern philosophy and ponder the nuances of the paradoxical relationship between duality and non-duality. All this would take a number of years—or lifetimes. And you might have earned a doctorate along the way, but you would be no closer to Liberation. In truth, you will get much more from spending a week with a liberated sage than years reading great books. What you will get from the sage that is decisive is not the new concepts that you may learn. What you will receive is the direct transmission of the Supreme Power. This will dissolve the ego and its censoring filters and enable you to access Truth and Infinite Love. You will realize that everything written in books is false. And you will realize that the world you thought you were living in is a delusion, as was your own imagined identity. You will be utterly enraptured by the divine light and the bliss of supernal love. Liberation is your Real nature. There is no benefit from projecting its secret into books. That is a detour that you can avoid. Your goal must be Silence, not more words. Namaste, Shunyamurti"

Ironically, all the very convincing statements of 'you're not alone" are also appearing in absolute aloneness! @WaterfallMachine I found this video to be very helpful on the topic of loneliness:

@haai14 @blazed I understand that perspective determines interpretation of "physical reality". What I meant was the raw reality of a tree/river/house. How is the pure perception {tree} a reflection of what I believe. First there is a perception/form/colour/seeing, then there is my interpretation of the perception as a consequence of my belief-system. But the "world" in itself is not mirroring a belief of mine. It's not: "I believe tree... oh look there it is!". I can't believe "tree". I hope you see what I mean. it's: "There appears something we call tree, and I believe this to be true about the tree". exactly.

@haai14 Yes, but "Your physical reality is just a reflection of what you most strongly believe to be true" the tree doesn't care what I believe. I may have thoughts about the tree, but the tree doesn't give a shit.

@AleksM never understood this concept really. If I look at a tree and a river, how is that a reflection of what I most strongly believe to be true?

@JubRani Check out RSDTyler on Youtube

@Soulbass For the last 10 years, I developed mastery in self sabotage, creating problems out of thin air, and worrying about stupid things! Now I am in the process of giving up all of that to discover worthwile things to master.

@Sahil Pandit trying to love everyone might be chimpery because it's not natural if you don't really feel it. It becomes neurotic if you force it. If you clearly see that everybody you see is going to die and struggles with the same problems of being a human in this weird, sometimes terrifying existence, love comes naturally. Because you don't want to possess and grasp the "other" anymore (which leads to fear and frustration, because it's an attempt to control them, and you can't control them), you see they are made out of the possibility to go away forever at any second.

@egoless Well you can say the same about enlightenment. There is no "enlightenment". This is where language collapses. Every philosophical perspective has 1 magical "foundation". The magical "foundation" of "enlightenment/nonduality" is the "NOW/being/happening/awareness" itself. It's the recognition that existence is mysteriously and bizarrely just happening, without needing a justification. The magical foundation of the thought process is a brain in a universe, because of a big bang out of nothing, etc. But the magical foundation of "nonduality" is so directly in your face that it doesn't need the reasoning of the other metaphysical magical foundations. The magical foundation is self evident

There are infinite dreams/reality planes. This here might be a materialism simulation. Of course it is very very convincing, just like any dream. The dream or simulation of materialism is so perfect that it is believed to be not just a simulation but actually a material world. People then, in this simulation, say "but look at this alzheimer patient, and this brain damage, and this causal chain of brain-behavior/experience change. Surely it must be happening because of a brain and a physical world!" But this is nothing more than underappreciation of what reality can do. Why should reality not be able to create a absolutely perfectly convincing illusion? Because a logical story based on perceptions says otherwise? but this story is also just happening! There is an actuality of happening, and then a story that says the actual perceived truth is not the actual truth, but only a consequence of a "real" foundation (brain, matter, cosmos, big bang, quantum field, etc.) that is not the perceived happening. It is because the actual happening is too simple for the thought process to comprehend, so it creates a "logical" story to justify it's existence.

@OhHiMark Your sister is obviously not taking responsibility for her life. Yes, the upbringing may not have been ideal, but everybody is just doing their best given their own programming and upbringing. No matter how bad it was, by blaming her mother she is giving away responsibility and power, taking the position of a victim. It is both damaging herself and her surroundings, and most likely will influence the child to be a similar way. Until someone wakes up out of this programming and takes ownership of his/her own life. It's probably not going to be easy for to admit to herself what damage she is causing by this, because the mind doesn't want to take responsibility and admit that there is nothing and nobody to blame other than itself. It's comfortable to blame outer things and other people and stay in the same patterns. It's emotionally painful to stop lying to oneself and to change. But when she sees this, things turn to the better. She needs a good therapist who is brutally honest with her. A bad therapist can actually perpetuate the problem by digging into the story of upbringing and parents forever and ever (Or do the personal development work herself, but doesn't seem that this is a viable option atm) maybe show her this video

@h inandout I think what he was trying to say is that there is no such thing as a Zen monk: If you want to identify something, you have to point that thing you want to identify out in opposition to something which it is not. Thats the whole function of identification. Defining a boundary and make a distinction between that and something else. So what boundary do you define as [Monk] distinct from [Not-Monk]? Every meaning of a word depends on the meaning of other words used in defining it. There are no absolutely isolated object in existence. Meaning every object has atleast a relation to one other object. Identify (dictionary.com):"to recognize or establish as being a particular person or thing; verify the identity of:" [Fast] is a "thing" only because it entails not being [Slow] as the opposite. "He identified her as being very fast" - So she must not have been slow. But what for example is [Wednesday] in the actual world? Where can it actually be observed/known? Similarly it is with [Monk]. What is a monk in the actual world? Is [Monk] really a symbol that symbolized something as opposed to some-thing else? This is why you can't actually be a monk, aswell as you can't actually be your name. You are just here on this island as everybody else. If you put on a robe and go into a monastery, that doesn't make you a [Monk]. Because it's not a word symbolizing anything in reality. It's just a noise. Complete made up cultural idea. Sorry got a bit long