SOUL

It's almost insidious the way the mind will continue to frame everything as a duality. It is a misperception of the mind but one that served it well so doesn't relinquish the habit easily. Which is evident in the way even non-duality is unconsciously framed as an opposite of duality. This is why I place considerable attention in brining to awareness the hallmarks of how it is expressed. Although, I don't put too much importance on a concept to replace it otherwise the mind may try to contrast that in dualism as well with a right and wrong or good and bad dochotomy.

Try not thinking about 'enlightenment' or self actualizing for a few days and see how that works. Can you just 'be' without trying to 'do' it? Haha...... you addicts.

It's a challenge to communicate personal subjective experience to others without having a dogmatic aspect to it. Our experience as it unfolds is a spontaneous event and the revelation in that is authentic but when we tell others of it it turns into conceptualization by the very nature of the act. Not that the conceptualization is inherently a negative or less awakened but since everbody's experience is so individualized and divergent the teaching of our own direct experience can be dogmatic. Especially if we take a tone of authoritative knowledge which can happen in the zeal of expressing it to others.

I'm not talking about the video, I also don't claim to be 'right', which is a dualism concept as well. My perspective which is cultivated through my own subjective experience allows me to transcend the duality in those concepts without necessarily dismissing them as useless.

I didn't watch it and it doesn't require me to watch it to know it's just him expounding upon an old concept, though I'm sure some may get value from it.

Except that isn't the dualism being expressed by "life is a dream", it's the real-illusion duality that people interpret as real-not real. It isn't really a duality though, an illusion is real, it's just that it isn't as it appears but it is still real, it's really an illusion.

Conflating what? I am aware of it...that "it" being the dualism in your perception that you aren't aware of yet. I don't have to impose any belief for the manifest to exist, it just does, that you think you can "proof to yourself the illusion" is a self imposed belief, one based in duality.

@7thLetter Leo didn't "come up with this insight", it's a regurgitated belief that has been circulating for a very long time. It's also a very slumbering dualism mindset that perceives the physical experience of the manifest as an opposite to spiritual experience and if you wish to transcend any duality in the mind you will not adopt this belief paradigm as your own. Haha

Be at peace, kid, healing happens.

Yet, this is what you have been doing this whole "issue" thread you have posted. I have repeatedly made aware our commonalities and attempted to bring clarity to why anything may differ to bring unity in it but you have been arguing about it right from the start even with someone who posted a video about their own experience that you see differently. Let it go and let it be.

Although, he said eat my body... so......haha

So you are saying awareness isn't enough for you to bring equanimity, it's adopting that does it, which is making it your own. Adopting is another way of identifying, so even though you are expanding the breadth of it to include 'opposites', it's still reinforcing identity. This is a solidifying process though it may not be rigid. meaning it's not flexible since you are open to including new ideas but it still is limiting in that it's identifying with an ideology. Equanimity isn't embracing opposing ideas to bring a balance in ideology, it's an approach to viewing anything in life. It's an even tempered, unbiased, centered perspective regardless of the ideas and ideology. Without disputing definitions it's apparent that acceptance has an agreement built into the meaning by endorsing the validity through the acceptance of it, it's attached to the ideology by agreement. Though, tolerance within it's meaning describes not being disturbed by the presence of something without necessarily endorsing the validity of it, it's unattached to ideology. You cannot resolve duality so being one through adding up both sides infinitely, it's still dual in equal parts, the way to do it is through not being attached to the sides, seeing it from a whole perspective without any sides dividing it. This is how simply being aware transcends the duality of accounting for sides.

Desire for popcorn is the source of suffering....

For an illusion it's full of flavor and quite filling!

Well, thank you for keeping the popcorn easily accessible your kind bucketness.....unless you mean the you are the popcorn, then yum. I guess if we are all things in the infinite then I am eating myself...YUM!...hehe

Of course...sometimes even a snowleopard.

@snowleopard There are many ways I express the infinite....hehe @Patang Absolutely!

Well, that's great to hear that you learn from your interactions. Although, to learn and to adopt don't mean the same thing in English, I say this because you mention that it isn't your first language. We can learn without adopting and we can adopt without learning since learning in becoming aware of something and adopting is making something our own. In light of what you said to the other poster I will agree it can be helpful to become aware of many different perspectives including the counter to what may be our own. There can be a balance that comes from acknowledging it but an equanimity is a balance without opposites, it's being balanced without using an external as a catalyst to be it. It actually is being balanced in spite of the externals even if those externals are things we have internalized. Although, if you tell me that you need to accept and adopt exactly what someone else says then you need to accept and adopt the idea I offer in that you do not have to adopt the ideas of others. Haha... I would like to point out that I did indeed learn something from our interaction, it's something that I have been contemplating for a couple years. It has been finally crystallized in the understanding that I have been using the word acceptance when I really do mean tolerance. Acceptance is really being in agreement with and accepting as valid or true, where as tolerance is a peaceable coexistence with but that doesn't necessarily agree with. So for all the times i have been saying acceptance I really meant tolerance and there is a clear distinction between them that I am aware of. Haha...

@tsuki I, too, agree that this life is an amazing gift so I prefer not to view it negatively and instead cherish every aspect of it. With Leo, this forum or anywhere you go and with anyone you cross paths in life people won't view it the same way you do so it will be a matter of acceptance and transcending the labels. Do the 'translating' to fit your own view, find what is useful and utilize it in your life because finding what works is more valuable than the way it is described. You don't have to adopt anyone else's viewpoint but there can be a lesson learned with everything we interact with.

Yes, I do. What is also clear is that the incessant 'killing off' of self, ego, beliefs, ideas, mind, thoughts and existence by people causes just as much suffering as those things they believe they are freeing themselves from by trying to wipe it away. Let it be.

So much of what is communicated and circulated as 'enlightenment' is wrapped up in a story based on conceptualizations including the whole "life is a dream" one. I have spoken often on here to the simplicity of being, the egoic mind doesn't want to 'believe' it can be that simple because there is nothing to do about it, nothing to cling to. What Adyashanti says in that video can be appreciated although in light of the word 'belief' being defined as 'accepting something is true or exists' it reveals his own perceptions as beliefs. Even though he's saying beliefs are misperceptions of reality he's also misperceiving beliefs relationship with reality yet it doesn't cause him suffering. Why is that? He isn't using his beliefs to sustain his peace so the misperceptions he does have don't interfere with it and cause suffering. The things he 'accepts as true or exists', his 'beliefs' of what is 'truth', though they may be misperceptions are not the basis of his peace, it's on the simplicity of being. Peace that is in simply being cannot be disturbed by beliefs. Even if every one of our beliefs are absolutely false about reality but our peace, joy and fulfillment is in being then that 'wrongness' has no power to steal it from us. Our peace is in being and not dependent on perceiving truth or reality as it is, it's simply being at peace. Garsh, I must seem like a jerk messing with Adyashanti's words like that, I love the guy, he's so authentically at peace.

Haha, so hilarious. I was just trying to point to how much of a challenge it is to speak on spirituality and being, that's all but you appear to take any interaction between us personally. You can't seem to let go of a previous conversation, maybe you can examine your self to discover why. Although since you brought it up.... "Teaching non-duality" is dualism....oh the irony. "Down to the level of the seeker".... so it's "down", huh? I thought there were no levels...hmmm Haha.

Since the absolute is infinite, the "what works better, what works and what may work and what doesn't work at all" is as diverse as their are individuals that are being. There is no universal, one size fits all "what works better, what works and what may work and what doesn't work at all". It's unfathomable how individualized each of our experience of being really is. I cannot tell you what works for you and you cannot tell me what works for me, We can speculate, we can investigate, we can communicate, we can hypothesize, we can analyze, we can generalize but we cannot realize what "works" for another. This is the ultimate challenge in 'spirituality' and the state of being.