alyra

well, by the inherent limits of language you are correct but I suppose it's more "accurate" to say that consiousness is a meaning that helps point to what consiousness points to.

@Nahm ye there's a reason why words of wisdom don't get lost in time, people sense it means something - one could claim that because awareness is everywhere, and true wisdom captures awareness well, that good wisdom would apply to anything a person needs wisdom for.

@Nahm agreed.

both ways are true. if something brings you success, you start to really care about it. if you really care about something, you have enough will to find success in it. in theory tho - if you have the wrong habits, you'll hinder either or both of these processes/feedbacks.

a lot of the attributes that we stereotype as masculine and feminine exist in all humans but are just more noticeable or more present in a noticeable number of men or a noticeable number of women. there's plenty of ambitious women I know, but I never thought of them as masculine. I wouldn't say I'm ambitious though

You say living with paradox is hard, and yet you’re already doing it

Eh none of these posts answer. Really tho you can’t answer. You can guide you can clear things up, remove distraction, but you can never really understand consciousness. In understanding you have introduced belief. In experiencing you also have found yours in an “explanation” of existence and are in the realm of belief. Some think removing thoughts and finding experience is a great way towards finding consciousness, sounds reasonable. But when you’re looking for consciousness can you really trust reason? Everything is consciousness really. But that sure doesn’t explain it, does it? What a useless answer! what is consciousness? Consciousness is a belief!

aren't they like... y'know... nondual no but seriously, I see some folk on here (and Leo too) go all on about how not-thinking is good or something. and I just raise my eye saying, what is so different between sensation and thought? what is so different between awareness and thought? I guess it could make sense to desire separating "monkey chatter" from "awareness" but IMO I would not say either is "not thought" I would neither say that awareness is thoughtless or without sensation; nor that thought is unaware or without sensation; nor that sensation is unaware or thoughtless. they all three are ultimately just fancy words to segregate consciousness out into independent identities, embracing the duality of our nature. I would agree with the idea that disallowing our monkey chatter to weaken our presence and consciousness could be desirable especially to people who feel as if they're struggling to find their way, but I wouldn't say that it's possible to cease thinking without dying. because thinking is a lot more involved than just pictures and words mussing around with our consciousness. I personally fail to find any merit in laying a divisive line between thought and awareness; they are very integrated in reality, to the point where they are not so different at all. oh, and I suppose there could be methods of meditation to become completely unaware too, but I have moreso heard of meditation seeking deeper awareness, not removing it altogether. so... convince me that awareness isn't thought

in case people glazed over this...

to me this is obviously thought. thought can exist without language. looking at the apple and seeing it, as an apple, as something to eat, while concerned over hunger, these are thoughts. maybe they are not considered "monkey chatter" but they are still thoughts.

who are you? have you stopped asking yourself this? why? are you satisfied with your understanding of who you are as the answer? have you stopped searching to better understand who you are?

you just described a process of change, my friend.

ah, I see, so thought is symbol, or meaning. got it! thanks, that explains things perfectly. it's tricky, because as soon as we identify what awareness is, we necessarily have applied meaning to it, and made it to be thought instead. anyone who claims they know awareness has proved that they are talking about thought I suppose some folk like @Leo Gura and @Nahm like to say they've found a way to be without those symbols, and I trust them that it is obtainable. but at the same time I feel as if they pressure me that I must also seek finding that experience. er, lol, not-experience, w/e. but that's a tricky thing see, because to claim that it is worth seeking, makes it to be a thought, a belief, a moral judgement.... I do not seek to obtain "no-self" on the level that others do, and yet I still work to... er.... "persue enlightenment" language is so tricky I am sorry. I had to teach myself to think by use of language at all actually.... so I struggle to use it to portray the thought I wish to... I often do it wrong. to me language is just so unnatural and clunky. what duality? ha! so is awareness. er, rather, at least, it appears to come and go, lol. to believe you are aware is a thought. to believe you can meditate to become more aware is a thought. (to become more aware - lol!) to believe that there is a screen and a movie projected onto it, and that you can shift your perspective to see that in a more aware way, is to in fact believe that awareness comes and goes, temporary, changeable, nonconstant. the constantness of awareness is no different than the constantness of thought, sensation, experience, whatever word you want to make up to symbolize some belief that you use to observe life with duality. it's fine y'know, no criticism, except that it don't answer my question

oh ok, now I am thinking, to describe wanting as, "a commitment to do, obtain, have, possess, or maintain some thing; or an impulse or compulsion to do/obtain/have/possess/maintain/etcetcetc..." this technically accounts for the mysterious emotional wanting I believe some others may in fact have, without needing to understand it myself in my not-having it.

I'm having a hard time identifying the concept of wanting. as far as I use the word, I use it to mean either a decision I've committed myself to, or a compulsion to alleviate some kind of irritation like restlessness or hunger. but when I pay attention to other human individuals who discuss wanting, it seems to be associated with some kind of desire, or some kind of feeling of intense interest in a thing to the point where you... idk.. "want" it... what is that? I don't understand that aspect to it. and also even tho I can't identify exactly what this kind of "emotional wanting" is that gives people engagement in their way, I guess somehow I expect I'm supposed to too, and I'm generally trying to find ways to operate perfectly fine without this mystical wanting that I'm pretty sure I lack, but it's confusing because I've tought myself in some way to be expecting this "wanting" to occur. I'm putting this here because I don't find it to be some kinda major emotional problem I have. I find plenty of things engaging, find I like a lot of things, and I make decisions just fine, commit to things, but I've just found a blocker to my planning things out that's based on expecting there to an event (wanting) that doesn't occur, that I don't even need to perform my endeavor, yet it prevents me from moving along with my endeavors because I'm waiting for something which isn't happening. so even tho it ain't the only thing I'm doing to improve my functionality in pursuing my endeavors, I want some assistance in conceptualizing and identifying what this "wanting" is that others seem to be so attached to. I'm trying to explain it but, if it is in fact true I don't experience this "Wanting" others seem to, lol at me trying to understand it without assistance!

careful, better to say "we" than "me" - the self is not YOU, it is not-you: the belief that you are you and that there is nothing beyond your being there, is NOT the understanding that all is as one. Necessarily there are things in which we aren't aware of, because our awareness is limited in order to exist at all. this is the trick. in the life that we see before us, we know that there is an infinity of possible awareness's we will never obtain, look to the stars! we can see that they are there, we see evidence of their existence, and yet we can never be existent as the stars exist. we can come up with ideas about how atoms are a true thing, yet we cannot truly be the atom. at the best, we can be a human who pretends to be the atom. or we can be an awareness that once thought it was human, which now thinks it is an atom, which later will return to being a human, and then trick itself into believing it knows what it is like to be an atom. but the only way to be an atom, is to have no true capability to understand what it is like to be anything else but an atom - just as we have no true capability to understand what it is like to be anything else but a human. we can pretend to know and come up with reasonable claims as to what alternative experiences of awareness are - but no matter how authentic that belief can be, it is still just belief. maybe it'll be easier to understand what others are if you imagine that they are a fabricated dream that you do not understand. and then from that basis, work towards realizing that instead they are a trick of the mind to process information on a deeper level than just the first level of direct awareness, a way of storing memory. and then from there, work towards seeing that you are just as fragile as they appear to be, that in an instant those dreams could shatter the dream that is you just as quickly as the other way around. in fact, we all shatter the dream of each other on a regular basis - move on with the day, forget (temporarily) of the existence of some individual. this is the nature of duality within nonduality. existence is nondual, but an essential part of experiencing existence is duality. how can you experience something if it is all one thing? you can only experience something if one thing experiences and the other thing is ethe experience. this is duality! nonduality is to realize that the experiencer and the experience are as one. the light projected onto the screen is as one. to stop seeing the screen or the light or the light projected on the screen at all, as seeing that is that! of course the world has consistency. it would just be a dream if it weren't consistent. oops but, it is a dream but you can make it inconsistent. in fact, necessarily it is inconsistent, lol, you say that the math explains why this or that or the other thing, well the math also fails to explain those or these or this other other thing. you just weigh on the consistency more than you do on the inconsistency, in order to convince yourself that reality is different from a dream. that's a fair enough thing to do. it is different, but not as different as you think. both are just a belief of experience, taking an observation and applying deep meaning to it and searching for consistency to rely on. please continue to rely on consistence, but work to start to notice that its consistency is just as illusory as its inconsistency, and its inconsistencies are just as real as its consistencies. (wait, did I say anything in this post? I hope I made any sense...)

which also means, witty enough to fall for even bigger ones, be careful seek external influences to guide you, but ultimately the answers lie within. it is good to ask questions, and it is good to challenge claims/assumptions/beliefs/etc

this is a funny statement, a teacher trying to tell a student that they are the problem. very ironic! edit: teacher and student as in, role-wise. no one hired shin to teach anything here we are all eachotehrs teachers at times and eachouthers students at times

language is hard for me something about autism and processing the world almost purely via concept. I tend to enjoy my emotions, but I have had a history of anxiety and depression, so I also tend to remove myself from my emotions, allow them to be, I'm not perfect at it as a depressed day can certainly cause me to be tired and unmotivated, but I tend to make decisions about things in a more "thoughtful" way idk if "logical" is the best way to say it... I can be impulsive of course. idk really how to answer your question... lol

i have a lot of interests, but I could take em or leave em. i often commit to endeavors, but that commitment comes from a decision. the closes I come to wanting, is remembering that I usually like the way my body handles pizza to energize it over the way chinese does, and so I say I "want" pizza because it is by my regards the superior choice. a decision based on past experiences. how can that be wanting? i feel like aliar to say i want pizza, expecially when they look dissappointed - they wanted chinese, and I am perfectly happy with chinese, it's yummy too.

nope, nope, nope, idk maybe, idk maybe. hunger is just a feeling in my stomach, and I know it is time to eat. if there's any food i want it is cheese. but if "wanting" is wanting cheese, then it's the only thing I want lol, and I know that can't be true. I think my cravings for cheese are desire, not wanting. unless they really are the same, but enough people say that wanting is different from desire, is this accurate? I only really find I desire things like food, drink, basics of sustaining my existence. and so far "wanting" when I say I want something, it is a conclusion I've made, and then commited myself to. I want to exercise, because when I don't my body feels weak and even hurts or becomes constrained in tightness. I do not like that, and also find it to be detrimental to my endeavors. so I say that I want exercise. I also say I want endeavors, but again, that is just a statement of a commitment I've decided to apply myself towards. I am assuming that that is not really wanting. would you agree? or am I mistaken in my assumptions? assumptions 1) that desire is different, but similar, to wanting 2) that committing to something is different from wanting 3) that responding to stimulus is also not wanting. 4) that technically speaking, you COULD call any of the above wanting, but there is something else that is more accurate, more precise, colloquially, that means wanting, which is an emotional interest in a thing, where you feel some kind of emotional investment in "Getting" the thing you find interesting.

some of those things I'd've second-guessed and then done wrong

is this identity/ego? if not, why not?

also piggybacking @Girzo @beastmode I really agree! there is certainly space for PD to become successful right now - a low supply of PD advisors/counselors/etc - if there weren't, we wouldn't have a huge ol' country all panicking about some silly president and there's definitely truth in the "nonduality" of considering all professions as personal growth. the #1 question of nearly every career is, "how are you going to advance your career" this inherently leads to self-growth. humans in fact, naturally without trying, they develop themselves over time too! old fogeys are stereotypically wise and stoic, and young whippersnappers are notoriously foolish dreamers not worth a damn personal growth is secretly everyone's passion, or is it really the other way around - everyone's diverse interests in life all involve personal growth in some facet. We all here just like Leo so we talk a lot about consciousness work, and think it's all the highest form of personal growth, but those plumbers dedicated to plumbing sure as hell are passionate about plumbing being the truest life purpose.

this, here, is par for the course. this is a site for people passionate about life purpose. a larger number of these people than usual will find deep passion in work revolving around personal development. (edit: shout-out to @Nahm because we said basically the same thing here lol) But it isn't so limiting as you* think, people help each other a lot more than is really realized. you can find wisdom from doctors, therapists, physical therapists, religious leaders, trainers at gyms, yoga teachers, school teachers, professors, in fact even a boss or manager has ample opportunity to train newbies on personal development, especially one who works as manager in a small town store. personal development is your life purpose but you don't want to be a cliche like all the rest? go into your hometown, become a manager at wallmart, and constantly train all the newbies in ways that changes their life. they temp through wall mart for a few months or years, than go off to pursue their own dreams, spring-loaded from your advise as you trained them in walmart. *you meaning op and anyone else curious about the same concern