jjer94

@Nickinicki343 When you realize you are "everything and nothing," you will be making a lot less distinctions in your experience. One of the distinctions removed is right and wrong. You become amoral. You do whatever feels right. If it feels right to be vegan, you'll be vegan. If it feels right to keep eating meat, you keep eating meat. There comes a point where you realize that EVERY ethical argument is bogus (every argument stance in general), so diet choice just doesn't matter. I suggest you avoid wasting time in semantical arguments about stuff that has little to nothing to do with realizing your true nature. Your true nature is beyond all arguments. Cheers.

A lot of people here are confused about what enlightenment really means. Some think it's simply the realization of your true nature. Others think it's that PLUS the alignment with your true nature over a lifetime. How do you precisely define enlightenment, Leo?

Now shoo, and go find out what you are!

Hi Emerald, As Kenya says, you're very intellectual and your posts reflect that. However, that has backfired, as you've got yourself stuck in the realm of words. My guess is that you wrote this topic as a way to get your "fix" of words. Words that affirm what you say, words that give you reassurance that everything will be okay, words that reinforce your spiritual beliefs, words that will magically make you re-live your Ayahuasca experiences. You're going to get a lot of different opinions here, and you're going to take them only half to heart. Then once you get your "fix," you're going to look for more magic words that'll give you enlightenment. And so the cycle continues. I don't mean to sound harsh, Emerald. I say this all out of the utmost empathy, because I've been in the exact same position as you, several times. This too shall pass. So here's my opinion. Leave this forum, and don't come back until you've had at least a glimpse of your true nature. Don't read any more spiritual/nondual texts until you've had a glimpse of your true nature. Don't watch any spiritual/nondual videos until you've had a glimpse of your true nature. You already know the ins and outs of enlightenment theory; now it's time to throw it in the fire and find out what you are in direct experience. It's simpler than you think. In fact, thinking is the problem. Sit down anywhere, maybe even with some background noise. Mind-wipe your Ayahuasca experiences and pretend like they've never happened. Mind-wipe any spiritual knowledge you have. Mind-wipe your name, your memories, and your roles. Stop believing that you are a human body on planet earth in the year 2016. Stop believing that you are an entity experienced. Stop believing that you are an entity behind the eyes. Just close your eyes and confirm for yourself that there is only moving boundary-less perceiving occuring in...what's left. Totally solid. I've already said too much. Don't intellectualize it and just look. You're already here. Once you've seen it, you will be able to ground your insights in direct experience. From that place of wisdom, you'll have a more intimate sense of why you're feeling directionless. Cheers!

Yes, you're overthinking. You had an amazing glimpse, and now mind is trying to make sense of it (and hijacking it) with concepts. Have you ever considered that there never was such thing as time? That this moment as it is, is timeless already? What we call "time" is really in reference to the flow of experience. Experience is always moving. What it occurs in is the immovable now. When has it ever been not-now? No need to answer, just take a look in your direct experience! Cheers.

Good! Be vigilant. When you begin to notice the hidden rules you use to direct your actions and live more spontaneously, it's absolutely terrifying at first. The moment you open yourself up to spontaneity, you open the floodgates for your fears. You must face each and every one of them as they come up. Welcome in the emotional pain, the vulnerability, the risk of being openly disliked, even physical pain. Not many people are willing to do that. If you've already had a glimpse of your true nature, it may be easier. Regardless, surrender is victory. You achieve invulnerability through vulnerability. When you open yourself up to everything, what is left to defend? Spontaneity is a complete openness to what is, a complete detachment to experience. Not detachment in the sense of "I don't care," but detachment in the sense of "whatever's arising is perfect as it is! I could die happy right now!" Most of us are micro-managing each moment in order to run away from a past we fear and a future we desire. And by doing this, we deny that which is right in front of us. Spontaneity is living, moralism denies living. Spontaneity is open and vulnerable, moralism is closed and protective.

We're all crazy motherfuckers One possible method of dealing with others and these heavy topics is what I like to call "The Vampire Method." You know how vampires can't come into your house until you invite them in? The same thing here: Avoid talking about this stuff with other people unless they invite you to talk about it. As Arik said, you probably don't want to run through the streets and yell. Remember what happened to Jesus? You forgot this: !

Enlightenment is permanent. The enlightened state is simply your present experience, unfiltered! It's not a constant "feeling" of bliss or what have you. If you're chasing after bliss, that's just another one of ego's carrot chases, so beware. All experiences pass; enlightenment stays the same. Very subtle, and very simple. Fundamentally, nothing changes. On the surface, everything changes. How circumstances change after enlightenment vary from person to person. Some may become "bodhisattvas," others may become hermits. Some may vandalize a parking lot, others may feed starving children in Africa. It's all up in the air after realizing that the person has no control whatsoever over what they do, as well as realizing there's no such thing as morality. You're a caterpillar trying to build a conceptual framework of what it's like to be a butterfly. But that conceptual framework will only hold you back from metamorphosis. I suggest that you forget about the antics of the butterfly and instead focus on the inner work to become one! Cheers.

Notice how you're searching for an experience of enlightenment. You're expecting fireworks: some FEELING of connectedness or bliss. Realize that those experiences are fleeting. Your True nature is always here. If "Truth hath no confines," you already are connected to everything! Your present experience unfiltered by belief is enlightenment. I suggest you stop searching for a drug-hit of bliss. Instead, start by examining the belief that there is a "you" looking out at an external world. You'll soon find that Awareness, as you like to call it, is already not confined inside the body. Cheers!

People often confuse detachment with observing. You can fully experience something and be detached from it at the same time. Attachment is "this experience should/shouldn't be here." Detachment is "experience is exactly how it should be." Observing is analyzing experience using the light of awareness. You don't need to observe every experience; that's just silly! In fact, 'observer' is a dualistic idea, because it implies that there is an entity looking out at the world... Some food for contemplation: What if there is no such thing as an observer? What if there is no observer "looking out" at the world? What if there is only "out"? Cheers!

@Joe Schmoe Imagine for a moment that you are the number Zero. Zero is ground-zero reality: undifferentiated, untethered, just itself, not even an "it". Just the fabric of reality, eternal and unchanging. Synonyms for Zero: the void, Self, Brahman, Infinity, Truth, Pure awareness, nothingness, no-thing. Zero is sad because it can't be aware of itself. It is totally void of sentience and objects. So what does it do? It creates the finite illusions of One and Two. Zero inhabits One, the human I-perspective. This is where things get tricky. Zero wants to spice things up, so it inhabits many "One's" and tricks itself into believing in the illusion of Two. Another common word for Two is Maya. Two is the illusion of duality, particularly that there is a "perceiver" and there is the "perceived," as opposed to the One perspective which is just "perceiving." In that way, Zero can ride along in the One perspective and dream as Two: that it is a separate entity called a "self" or "ego." Two inevitably obstructs Zero due to identification. So enlightenment is like hide-and-seek. It's the realization and cultivation of your Zero nature. By creating the illusion of finiteness with One and Two, Zero can then use finiteness as a reference point to become aware of itself. Have you ever heard the teachers say that enlightenment is "Awareness being aware of itself?" Without One and Two, Zero can't be aware of anything (e.g. deep sleep). With One and Two, Zero can be aware of One and Two and itself. The path to enlightenment mainly consists of seeing through the illusion of Two. Seeing through your illusions is synonymous with disidentification, and it's often quite painful. But that's another topic. Many people see enlightenment as a good thing, some see it as a bad thing. Fundamentally, it's neutral. If it happens, it happens. Hope that clears things up a bit. If you're more confused, that may be a good thing. Cheers!

Suppose that a god announced that you were going to die tomorrow “or the day after.” Unless you were a complete coward you wouldn’t kick up a fuss about which day it was—what difference could it make? Now recognize that the difference between years from now and tomorrow is just as small. Marcus Aurelius

@electroBeam Hi electro, I never suggested that you shouldn't meditate. I just pointed out the trap in believing that you should or have to in order to reach enlightenment. You don't. Like I said, how do you get to where and what you already are? Fundamentally, there is no process. There's a quote from...Carl Sagan? I believe, not sure...but it goes something like: in order to make an apple pie from scratch, you first have to create the universe. In other words, fundamentally no one particular decision or technique has brought you to where you are now. The entire successional flow of the universe has brought you here. Meditation and contemplation for enlightenment work has brought you to where you are just as much as your dump on the toilet two weeks ago. I'm pointing this out so you don't spend decades of your life meditating with the heavy expectation of an explosion of bliss-enlightenment. We falsely expect these techniques to get us somewhere because ego desires to get to a better place, while the gurus do it because they know it's getting them nowhere. This is it already. It's just a matter of seeing clearly. Then what's the point of doing these things? Good question. This is where I contradict what I said above with the apple pie, so bear with me. Meditation, contemplation, spiritual autolysis, mindfulness and all of these other techniques are a hands-on approach to helping you see through your mind-made illusions. By doing these things over and over again, you learn more and more to see what is and see through what is not. That way, you suffer much less from your illusions. I agree with @99th_monkey that waking up is really the starting point to Self-cultivation, as I like to call it. Self-realization is the easy part. Self-cultivation is the hands-on part, where you slowly release control over your life by seeing through illusions. Ego doesn't want to release control. But by seeing through the illusion of ego, it begins to happen naturally. It's as though Self-realization is the spark that lights the powder keg, and then the fuse burns on its own through Self-cultivation. That's my experience at least. @99th_monkey I found that in a store. I was hoping the writing on the doll's sticky note would show up because I thought it was funny. It says "y'all need Jesus".

Like I said before, this is completely off topic. If you want to waste your time and make a "jjer94 debunked" topic along with your other 40 posts per day, be my guest. I'm sure you'll find more loopholes in my post history so you can be hypocritical and point out how "nonsense" I am to gratify your own spiritual ego. A great use of your time, I'm sure. Cheers mate.

@Mal Lol. You got upset that I ignored your second post, so you decided to dig through my post history to try to prove that I am nonsense. Still stuck in the realm of words, I see? Of course I am nonsense. We all are. I'm just pointing to stuff and trying to cater to the "stage" of the person I'm writing to. If I contradict myself in some situations that's because it called for it. Just how Leo's old videos contradict his newer ones, and he knows it. He's catering to different people. Do I contradict myself? Very well then .... I contradict myself; I am large .... I contain multitudes. ---Walt Whitman This thread is about someone who's wondering whether or not to meditate. It's not about what enlightenment really is, or whether I'm enlightened. That's why I didn't go into enlightenment definitions. You're just trying to come up with some way to label me. Who the heck cares whether I'm enlightened? That just gives people a silly excuse to see me as an authority, when everybody ought to be their own authority. I'm not even going to tell you here how I define enlightenment, because it's off-topic. Go make a thread about enlightenment and how you define it, then tag me. I'll be happy to give my perspective there. Cheers!

Let the thoughts rave on. Let them be as crazy they are. Then, the moment you're not able to latch onto any thought and you get into panic mode, ask yourself, "What dies?" After some contemplation, follow that question up with, "What am I so afraid of?" Maybe writing down some answers to that second question will give you a new perspective. Don't continue reading until you've done this. Do you see how fear is running your life? You're trying to be a certain way for everyone else because 1. You want to maintain security (which is an illusion, by the way. Your body can cease functioning this very moment) and 2. You've mistaken yourself to be something that is transient, and so you're scrambling to keep that identity together. Use what I suggested above as a way to see that "you" as a thought are dying every moment. Can you see? "You" are dead this very moment. You're coming to this forum pleading "save me," but there is no one to save. Now the real test is whether you'll have the guts to live out this realization so that suffering will be eliminated. This means running towards your fears and never having solid footing ever again. If you're unwilling, then it's best to stop visiting a forum centered around just that. "There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." ---Anais Nin

Lots of people here have different ideas for what that means, so I'm not going to answer that question.

Be careful...this is exactly the kind of spiritual dogma that you want to watch out for. To every rule, there are always exceptions. Enlightenment is a pathless path; there is no process to get to where you already are. Anyone who says you HAVE to do x or y is missing the point. As an example, I didn't meditate before I woke up. It was only a year later that I found Do Nothing particularly useful for my situation. I've also been doing it for a month and a half. Meditation is just one of many tools for seeing through your mind-made illusions, among having other benefits. Sure, it can be useful for everyone in some way, but if I were you I'd avoid going as far to say you NEED to do it. Everyone's situation is different.

I'm making this topic in response to another recent topic called "Do You Have to Have an Enlightenment Experience to Become Enlightened?" I posted something in that topic, but it went off on such a ridiculous tangent that I would have been doing a disservice to the readers. So I pulled a "Pinocchio." I've been skirting around making a long-ass post like this for some time because I personally find this forum to be quite distracting and there's always the risk of spiritual ego...that's why I don't post much anymore. But now, the perspective seems to have changed from getting internet point "bloops" to how I can use this platform as a tool. It's a test of sorts to see how effectively I can use words to express my experience. I'm sure at least one of you will benefit in some way. The urge to write about all this stuff is definitely there...and who knows, maybe a blog of sorts is on the horizon. Now here's the post, paraphrased. The topic question "Do You Have to Have an Enlightenment Experience to Become Enlightened?" is misleading because enlightenment is not an experience. All experiences are fleeting; your true nature is ever present. However, the realization does often happen as an event, and I prefer to call that event an "awakening." Fundamentally, nothing changes after an awakening. Everyone seems to glorify awakenings, like they're so difficult to get. They also make it seem as though it's the end-all-be-all; that once you have an awakening you'll instantly be forever at peace (That happens to probably 0.1% of people). An awakening actually is really dang simple, and it's only the first step on the pathless path of enlightenment. The brunt of the journey is clearing away all the leftover flotsam and jetsam of the self-structure post-awakening; that takes earnestness, as Nisargadatta put it. That's also where meditation and other techniques really start to have a noticeable impact. That's my experience, at least. Right here, right now, an awakening is possible. Sit down, and shut up. Stop telling yourself you're unworthy or you need to meditate more or read "I Am That" for the 124th time, and read this with as much open-mindedness as possible: At this moment, you unconciously believe yourself to be a number of things: an ego, a personality, a body, memory, a spiritual ego, etc. Now notice that all of these things are experiences. Like I said before, all experiences are fleeting, so they couldn't be you. In fact, a lot of your suffering comes from trying to make these fleeting experiences into a solid entity in which you call "you." Kind of like trying to hold onto a rock in the middle of a stream while the water's slapping you in the face. Yet among these passing experiences, something never changes...hmm... At an intimate level, you feel like you're inside the body "looking out." But examine your experience closely...there is only "out". There is no one seeing; there is only seeing. Look at these words. There are only these words. Nobody sees them. The words just appear. The same goes for all other perceptions: there is only perceiving. At a fundamental level, there isn't even such thing as a body; a body is just a part of perceiving. No one is thinking; thoughts just appear. No one hears; there is only sound. There is no "you" inside a body looking out towards an "external world"; in a sense, the external world is inside you. Sights and sounds are just as much "inside you" as thoughts and feelings. You may feel much more open after reading that...good. If all there is is boundary-less perceiving, and you are not perceiving, what is left? What is left when you remove all ideas of a body, of an ego "looking out," of an external world, even of I AM, the sense that you exist? What is left when you remove perceiving? What is left when you remove the entire universe? Forget about your ideas of existence and non-existence for a sec. Just look and see what is! It's not a thing or an experience, but it just is. It's totally impersonal and inconceivable. The moment I try to describe it, I reduce it. It's the silence of sound, the emptiness of a picture, the beingness of touch and taste and feeling and thought. It's the backdrop, not experience but pervading all experience. It's the timeless immovable trunk of a tree, while experience is the transient leaves. It's so empty that it's full. So mysterious, and so alive. Do you see? If you woke up to this, congratulations. Bask in it. Laugh, cry, do a silly dance; the body will probably want to do something. Let it do its thing. Notice how the body animates itself without a "you." Pretty cool, huh? To quote Almost Famous: "It's all just...happening!" Like I said, this is only the beginning. Don't expect that the ego will be completely gone after this. In fact, it may come back even stronger for some time. But that's a story for another day... (In the meantime, this may help.) If you still don't see it, don't fret. Maybe these words just don't resonate with you, and that's okay. Perhaps mind is still in the way. I'd say try refuting more of your beliefs, especially the belief that you're a tiny dot of consciousness in a vast universe full of matter. That's a biggie. What if it were the other way around? (use this and/or this as a possible resource.) And finally, on a side note, those who have examined their experience further may notice the capacity to focus on one perception at a time. I call that the "spotlight," and it can also be used as a gateway to discovering the Truth of what you are. The spotlight may be another intimate sense of "you," but again, it's impermanent (e.g. deep sleep), so it couldn't be the Truth of you. What is the spotlight made of? That's a lot to take in. Okay, that's it! I'm signing off. Go click the like button, share with a friend, and don't forget to sign up to my newslet... Gotcha there, didn't I? Cheers, JJ

....But then there is no longer a "you" to claim ownership of Truth! Aww shucks...

Realize that your perspective is just another perspective, no more truer than the perspective of "conventional society." In fact, all perspectives are fundamentally false because they are finite. There is only the infinite "is."

Stop believing for a moment that the body exists (which fundamentally is the case). What's left? That's just a story. Forget about what you know, and see for yourself in direct experience. There is only perceiving! You are not "In your body"; the body is in you! The body is not perceiving; the body appears in perceiving! Your understanding is the very thing preventing awakening. All of these stories about atoms and emptiness are putting a filter on what is... Remove these filters by seeing them as just stories. There's nothing here to understand intellectually. What's left? Don't expect fireworks It's just your present experience unfiltered!

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I have come out of lurking to nitpick one small thing you said... From what I've read in this thread so far, you don't seem new to this gig. But be careful about saying that one should follow a specific path from a specific tradition. Enlightenment, at the most fundamental level, is just the realization of your True nature (or maybe a better way to put it is the realization of what you're not because Truth is completely inconceivable and "True nature" makes it seem as though it's an entity). True as in, there before "you" were born, here right now, and there in the future. True for eternity. The thing is, any "path" towards enlightenment is not a path, because how can you move towards or away from what you already are? The only obstructions to enlightenment are illusions, and no one method or "authentic tradition" will work for all illusions. This is why you often hear enlightenment being called the "pathless path." Some things work well for some folks, while other things work well for other folks. In fact, following just one tradition can often lead to the individual becoming more entrenched in even more dogma, illusions, and moralizing. I'm looking at you, Buddhism... This particular forum is also a great place to confuse the heck out of people. You're getting dozens and dozens of different answers from caterpillars to a question about butterflies, and then the caterpillars vote for which one sounds the most butterfly-ish. But how do you know that the highest voted post isn't bogus advice...? Being confused about this stuff may actually be beneficial, because it helps you to see the flimsiness of all words. Conceptualize about Truth all you want...it ain't Truth.