Neo

I must admit I am only starting out. I've experienced something that got me hooked, but so far I've only read chapter one of New Earth and spend very little time putting the work in. However this question I posed above has got me thinking, if day dreaming is not focusing on the present moment, I need to put more effort in, and yet every time I feel my "effort" I know it's wrong because it's all effort of the analytical mind. Do you see what my problem is?

There's quite a few remarks and indications on this forum that one needs an element of maturity to find the way.

I think my post was a long winded way of saying, don't confuse saying "I have no free will" with saying "I have no free will so may as well roll dice" they are two different things and it's not a correct assertion. The reason is that you confusing having a machine make decisions for you and having no free will.

@werlight But you can't think analytically or imagine this light going on when searching?

This dice rolling thing could be dangerous. Rolling dice just gives you a random and arbitrary course of action, whereas previously, you had the choice of waying up possibilities and taking a prudent course of action even if you believed you really had no free-will. The net result will be that your life course would take on an extremely random and precarious existence from that point onward. In turn the decision as to whether to use the dice in this pursuit would have to be weighed in the same way and the consequences considered, and so it is highly unlikely to be ever put into practice. So the premise is wrong to say that you may as well "simply roll dice." and to say that you will no longer make informed decisions and compare this with no free will is a false argument.

cnorhistorian, some of the little gripes you noticed on the forum tend to be built into the forum software as I've been a long term member of other forums for many years with similar features. The forum owner would just set what the user levels are called, things like that.

I don't know, I can't help you but as I have an inquisitive mind, the question arises; does the awareness of no-self and concept of no freewill affect will power detrimentally?

All ears. Interested in looking further but NOT ending up like Tony Parsons.

This is a good question. If you do any job that involves the public or customer service, you will run into problems. I mean what would the Buddha say when a customer says "I bought this item, it's not what I thought it was and now I want you to pay me compensation." Life is stressful. But I find the more you deal with the "muddy lake" the better you get at dealing with it, and you become tougher, and yet this is more a mental way of dealing with it, more baggage, more internal coping mechanisms and dissonance. When on this forum people are looking to remove all that baggage, so what is the answer?

I was staring at some trees through my window (fatal if you have the day dreaming habit) and I recalled Leo saying something about imagining there was nothing between him and the trees and I started doing this for a few minutes. I also suffer from visual snow in my field of vision (+ chronic tinnitus but that's another story) but it's quite easy for my vision to become a blur of static. Anyhow suddenly I feel cold and feel the wind rushing through those distant braches and just the feeling of rushing wind blowing right through me. And then I think what I have always thought my whole life, I have such an over-active imagination.

My Nirvana is fishing. While it tickles the ego because it's the mode of acquisition of "things", you don't know how many "things" are there under the water. There's a sense of not knowing what awaits you, and of course not really caring, because it's the process of fishing that's important, the journey. It's all about the journey.

Well, it kinda is you, you see that's confusing. There's another real you behind it.

It is said you will be scared because the ego doesn't want to die and makes you feel this way. I still feel it is a legitimate question to ask why you would want to undergo death of ego in the first place. Of course no enlightened person looks back and says they regret doing it; they can't because they no longer identify with what they once were, nor even know who they are afterwards. It no longer appears to matter. However, the fact that they can no longer see the world as they once did means that something is lost, and, in bliss, this fact they cannot appreciate.

Yes, I'm with ZenM on this, get out a do stuff. There's time for this later. I see it like telling a child that one day they can be an adult, so they choose to go to bed that night and die in order to become an adult, but in the morning they realise they can't go back.

In particular the waiting for the words to *come* and then at the end the open mouthed laugh, we have a patient where I work who believes he is King Arthur (part of British folklore if you are from outside the UK) and he has these same mannerisms through his delusional episodes. This is just an observation and not referring to any particular person.

@fdrakely I'm not sure if it's the answer you want or were expecting however, I found Tony Parsons a bit scary, I had the feeling of looking at someone with a bit of their soul missing, he would say "ego missing" no doubt, but there was definitely *something* missing. I feel sure that Leo's videos aren't intending complete death of ego in that the person isn't even functioning on the same planet when not in meditation. i.e. I always expected meditation would make you feel one with the universe when in meditation, not all the time.

If you can't even establish a causal link between meditating and reaching any given *enlightenment like* state or a hypothesis on how that can happen, then how could you ever begin to prove it? The experts themselves like Tony Parsons say you cannot actually bring about enlightenment by any means.

Personally, I believe that *some* aspects of this takes a leap of faith.

My initial response is, aren't affirmations what you use for the ego to talk deep down to itself to lay down a strong belief system? Saying, "I'm enlightened" is actually affirming the existence of "I".

I looked up Tony Parsons. I think he is saying a lot of the meditation work people on this forum are doing is a bit of a waste of time and that absolutely nothing you can do can bring about enlightenment.

I've ordered Tolle's book "New Earth". Curiosity got me clicking in Amazon on the negative reviews of his book and it's the first time I've encountered anything against Tolle or anything negative really remotely related to the purpose of this forum. (albeit these are in the great minority to the many good reviews).

My whole life I have occasionally been touched by a feeling of "I exist!" just during the course of my day. Not regularly, just a few times. And I don't mean the "wonder of existence" or "how amazing" but I believe it is truly experiencing what it is to exist in that moment. I used to call it "mind expanding" because that's the only way I can think of describing it.

I understand, but sometimes, people read something and it doesn't immediately answer everything, but they go away and sleep on it or reflect on it, and think, hmm, maybe Pinocchio was onto something when he said... now what was it now, let me look it up, what did he say... *NOTHING* DOH!

@Pinocchio Pinocchio, why are you deleting lots of your posts, it's going to leave the place looking like Swiss cheese?

Thank you but I already decided to read either of Tolle's books but couldn't decide which of the two?