SOUL

Yes, thoughts have hijacked your experience.... I talk about being, awareness and consciousness, you talk about thought self ego fear.... what is the focus of your attention? Not subtle it's so obvious. Hah

Then why do you post so much stuff on this forum analyzing about the characteristics and behavior of thoughts? It sure is a lot of complicated pointing, pages of pointing at thoughts.....haha

Any movement of thought self insight you think you are getting is part and parcel of the content of consciousness. You imagine about thought movement and yet others imagine thoughts are sticky and both visions of the content work for the viewer of it. Those two characteristics in the imagery are very differing perspectives of how thought and/or self exists or behaves within consciousness.....from that there's still some climbin' up the tree before we get to whole... unity.....holistic. Being......

@Faceless Let me give a hint. Content of consciousness...... Content of thought....... I could go complicated about it but it can be simply viewed on what's skewed too.

@Faceless Read my long post that he quotes and explain in it where he misunderstands/distorts/ignores what I said. If you are as attentive as you suggest it will be obvious. Please.

Let me do what I say not to do and get complicated. Observing our self is the simple part of it. Being aware of thoughts, emotions, senses, impulses, urges and everything that bubbles up as the content of our consciousness. This exercise of being aware but not actively attaching to what is the content in our consciousness is the simple. Just doing this simple exercise will have profound effect in consciousness. The complication comes in when we try to analyze the content of consciousness as if it has some secret message for our liberation. Does it? Or is it what keeps us bound? So if we investigate every detail and facet, break it all down so we think we know every bit of minutia about the content.... it's what? Still the content that often is what keeps us bound and suffering. All this fragment movement fear thought conceptualizing is just analyzing the content of consciousness. All systems of understanding are analyzing the content but it's the content that is to most the source of their suffering. So sifting through the baggage of consciousness isn't necessarily ceasing the suffering. What really does effect our conscious experience of ceasing suffering is breaking the bonds of attachment to the content. This doesn't mean we have to wipe it away to nothing or treat it as if it's evil incarnate because there are many ways to manage the content that fits each of our situations, there's no one way to do so. Although, mitigating or breaking the attachment to the content, whatever we ultimately do with that content, can reduce and cease the self induced suffering we experience in consciousness. There is nothing wrong with analyzing the content but often the ego seizes on the process and uses it to continue the suffering, not being a cessation of it. The simple approach is the passive observation of the content and letting it all just be what it is, the complicated approach is the analyzing of content as if there is meaning to it. One isn't right and the other wrong, they are what they are. Hopefully that wasn't too complicated.

We? You speaking for others again? Not so apparent you do understand.

It is easy to understand, it's contradictory and convoluted. Point to someone else and say 'you aren't paying attention' yet be unaware of one's own inattentiveness. Oh....and be authoritative while doing it using words like must, can't, never or always. Hah

You can say it's not but there are more than two dozen pages of words that prove otherwise.

This system of interpretation it the very antithesis of dynamic, it's quite codified into a rather static method of understanding. Words mean specifically certain things and the ideas conform to presupposed conditions. All of this meticulously compared with other's experiences here and it has organized interpretations. This is a rigid system, not dynamic at all.... it may be an exercise of rigidity in the present moment but for it to be a dynamic exercise the variables wouldn't be static as well as it would account for the perspective of individual experience.

Yes, indeed. Peace. @Faceless

I have experience in awareness of the present moment, an abiding presence of being... if that's a 'bias' then so be it. Presence of being manifests in my own experience with simple clarity and attention to right now, not the complicated systems of interpretation. There are very few who speak on the simple but there are very many who could cease suffering through the simple, I speak to those who still suffer and these complicated systems aren't working. I may ask some questions when there are convoluted or contradictory explanations and interpretations. I may challenge when there are statements of authority about "Truth" or when someone uses terms in absolutes like 'must'. The reason I do is because there can be quite a bit of confusing ideology circulating around while there are people continuing to suffer, seeking relief and it's contributing to the suffering. Although, if you want to talk about bias, why are you carrying around the bias accumulated baggage from this imagined system of interpretation viewing through the lens of this belief paradigm? On second 'thought'.... don't answer that.

@DrewNows The mind is highly suggestible and this is the reason why people find what they looking to find. Repackaging a simple message common to most spiritual pursuits into much more complicated imagined 'fragments' to try and make it whole again is really just creating a perceived problem that it supposedly resolves. I have come across 100s if not 1000s of these imagined systems of interpretation in my many years of exploring consciousness work and the most complicated ones are the most distracting ones that the ego/self fixates on. Although, there is no universal 'truth' to any of them, it's all just personal 'truth' of perceived experience. If it works for you, then be at peace with that. Peace.

I see clearly that you identify with the image you construct so completely you think everyone is subject to it and yet you fail to see how you are psychologically bound by it. There is nothing for me to go into, it's your imagination.... you have quite an imagination. I appreciate the invitation to go into it but there's no need for any of those images cluttering awareness. If the point of all this imagery is to cease self caused suffering then I already experience it without using your imaginings.

We? 'We' can also support one another to reinforce just like you and your 'movement' of people here are agreeing with each other's ideas. You mean like this system of abstraction, fragmentation and movement you have constructed and seek psychological security in that image to escape reality? Yes, it seems so. So then according to the abstraction you construct you 'image-ine' that the only way you can experience no suffering is this image of 'no image' you've seek psychological security in but this image actually nourishes the fragmentation which means you are still suffering and aren't "psychologically indestructible". *whew* The same? Another 'image' construct? Does that mean you imagine truth and false are the same, too? This isn't me imagining it to be, it's your 'image' I reference and just to be clear I'm not 'attacking' you, I'm just acknowledging what you say about it.

Baha...brilliant response! What I observe in community participation is often a pattern between people that is an extension of what happens within our self. We will have an experience in awakening so the self in an effort to remember and return to it will codify it as a specific set of concepts, to make it an identity, this is what it 'only' is and the 'only' way to get back to it, like a map, it's the 'true way'. That's why there is so much comparing of notes, so to speak, in the community participation, there is a desire for confirmation from others to secure identity as a group and personally. This is done through seeking a universality in ideology because if we all have the same conceptual view of it that confirms we are 'right', that this is the 'truth'. Then new comers to the community want to feel that they are 'right' and know the 'truth' to confirm identity so they adopt the community ideology which adds to the collective identity which also confirms personal identity. When in reality all of our experiences are very unique perspectives and the more specifics one would investigate in them the more divergence one would find in the details. This highlights the difference between truth being the state of true, as a fact which is not the same as truth being the state of true, in being consistent to. People are confusing that their experience of 'truth' means they have the accurate facts when instead our spiritual path, the experience of 'truth', or being true, is staying steadfast and consistent to being awareness, of abiding in presence. The facts about our experience may be different for each of us but ultimately abiding in presence is the 'universality'. Threads like this, the 'argument', are typically about trying to establish experiential 'facts' to confirm group and personal identity. I prefer to find unity in presence of being, of abiding in being aware now.

@Tistepiste Keep reading this over and over until it becomes unforgettable, there isn't much more that needs to be said. It's this simple. Well said @eputkonen

Hm

Anyone who is attempting to portray any of the compassionate policies mentioned here that a republic would employ to promote the general welfare, which is a constitutional charge on the government by the way, is instead a wholesale endorsement of a communist or socialist government is ignorant. Anyone who would equate equality according to the law with equality of outcome and decide because equality of outcome cannot be achieved that equality of the law isn't worth fighting for is ignorant.

He's very charismatic and his message is philosophically sound but it's pretty much 'textbook' after 1000s years of it being told. As I let his voice drift by awareness present in the state of well being, causeless well being, it was as if I was waiting for him to say it. In the last few seconds of the clip he did.... an "exuding well being", he said.... hehe, oh the oozing well being. I recognized decades ago that happiness, fulfillment, passion and peace are emergent qualities we are aware of in our conscious experience of 'well being'. He says many things to many people so in this he is speaking about 'causeless happiness' but it very well could be speaking to the presence of 'causeless well being' in our consciousness. Of course, in this clip you shared he doesn't get to expound on the very challenging nature of having the presence of causeless well being in us when our inner life is spontaneously not that on it's own. Instead it's ...um... "exuding" distress in all the qualities of suffering our miserable selves can muster up. If there ever was a trap it's here in thinking we have to 'make it' or 'do it'. He touches on that idea a little bit and I'm sure he explains elsewhere more about it but that is the core of the message really so I will speak it. Specifically I am speaking of our causelessly being causeless well being while impervious to the conditioned self's efforts to cause distress. This is more complicated than I prefer to explain yet it may benefit one who reads it so I do it. So, whether it's JP's 12 step of making it mean something or Leo's book lists and 1000s of hours for years or any of the infinite hoops that we would set up for our selves to jump through to 'get' it's all conditional circumstances for the 'do to get' caused well being. Which is why there are millions of people seeking 'do to get' caused well being and not finding an abiding experience of it. It's conditional, temporary caused 'well being' as long as those conditions we set for our self are met by our self so it creates a striving for it which is a form of longing, it's unfulfilled. Unlike the 'do to get' hoop, a 'causeless' well being is a 'just be it' and an unconditional expression of well being so there is potential for an abiding experience of it. Again, it wraps back to the message of a the abiding 'just be it' causeless well being while the conditioned self generates distress distraction is a challenge that no 12 steps or books read or endless hours of spiritual practices can 'do to get' it. No steps, books or hours of practice is actually the 'just be it' causeless well being. The difference between practice doing it and actually being it is the difference between the temporary experience of it as long as conditions are met and the abiding experience of it that is unconditional. The only 'do' we can 'do' to 'be' it is turn our attention to and increase our awareness of the causeless well being so that the self caused distress diminishes in our awareness. Yes, no steps, no books and no time needed to be it in each present moment. Stay attentive to the causeless well being and eventually the self will reflect the causeless well being and ironically be conditioned into an unconditional well being habituation. So a harmony will exist within the whole of our consciousness. Whew, that was alot of words, I'll shut up now. Hah

Yea, love it.... that's a deep healing exercise, another sublime and practical tip is mindful appreciation of the present moment.

I've said that before? Hah. I don't read much in this thread, I just see the pages of endless mind pumping piling up. It's funny.

This thread is a Pollock painting of mental masturbation preaching a blank canvas although awareness is a field of hemp mingling with a rainbow pallet of wildflowers.

Life bloomed as an expression of the absolute, it is the fruit of the absolute so living an enriched experience of the manifest existence transcends any 'dead self walking' state in the joy and fulfillment one can be present with since it is holistic in harmony of unity. Haha

"Enlightenment" is life.