SOUL

Why do you believe that the idea you have about consciousness is false and another idea is true? All that amounts to is swapping a belief for another one, then instead of believing the old one, you are believing the new one and belief is still framing the paradigm of the mind. Just because others agree with you, whether on the old idea in certain ideological circles or on the new idea in different ideological circles, it's still a belief in the mind's paradigm. It's not the ideas in of themselves that are of value, it's how those ideas serve our experience that are the value. Belief in an idea is the framework of the mind's paradigm and by labeling an idea it's the mind seeking to identify it more than our experience of observing it in the present moment to fit it into it's paradigm of beliefs. An idea is like a flower in the field, it's beautiful and alive as it is in it's natural state of being but once we pick that flower to keep for our self it dies. An absence of belief in any mind paradigm is an inherent trait of being present in the moment awareness, this 'presence' doesn't go about labeling things as true or false, It is simply being as it is and observes as it is without using systems to identify which are the processes and products of the paradigm creating mind. Presence isn't using a belief to be present, it is just being aware as it is and observing the moment as it is.

@Prabhaker So be it....

@Prabhaker .....and those with the ears to hear will hear.

@Prabhaker He calls it commune they call it church..... those with the eyes to see will see.

@Prabhaker No really, what? Well, except he isn't aware of his own faith, that's different I guess.

What's the difference between Osho and any one of those TV evangelist preachers living lavishly? No joke, really what?

@Socrates So this good and evil mind paradigm is just relative assessments based on subjective perspective that has no way to conclusively determine it's validity? How do you apply your "theory with real life" as you asserted others are not doing? There are a multitude of actions that are very much grey areas of disputed morality, how do they get determined to be sorted in this absolutes paradigm of good and evil? Is it just left up to each of us in determining which is good and evil depending on our subjective perspective of relative assessments?

@Socrates You used many words to avoid answering the question, will you answer the question? From who or where does this standard come and how to determine it's validity?

I have asked a question of people who suggest good and evil exists apart from just in the mind many times so I will ask you, from who or where does this standard come from and how to determine if it's valid?

There are plenty of people who position themselves as teachers but instead of clarifying it they obscure what is actually quite simple in an effort to sustain their status. This can lead many who are seeking liberation from their self imposed suffering to be even more disillusioned and they may eventually become embittered and doubtful. Then some of these disillusioned ones may try to coddle their own suffering minds by dissuading and distracting others from seeking what they themselves do not have. If they weren't suffering and instead were fulfilled in their life they wouldn't seek to discourage anyone else from seeking it for themselves regardless of the way it is found.

@benny Oh you want to resolve it! I can't help you with that, I couldn't solve it the first time so I couldn't explain how to resolve it I transcended it and gave the broken tangle to goodwill. Didn't mean to waste your time.... never mind.

@benny Well, faith in yourself can help build confidence. Behaving in the ways you seek to in the present is creating new habits even if they feel "fake" at first though with faith in the moment can build confidence in you and become natural eventually. The difference is that instead of digging around for the reflection material, let the ego bring it to mind and then observe it. Once the issue is repeatedly brought to attention in various ways you can contemplate it in light of what it is. You can be aware of the emotions, memories,,dialog habits that are entangled in the thoughts of your personal self paradigm. It's all interwoven and trying to deal with it would be like trying to entangle the messiest knot of Christmas lights in your mind, why even bother? Since the whole thing is plugged into a fearful socket and it's made up of yesterdays... unplug it! See, I know that most people seek pleasurable experience so I suggest plugging in to the emotions associated with well being. As cliche as it sounds the only way you are going be attractive to others is for you to be attracted to your own experience, agreeing with the fearful yesterdays isn't likely going to help in doing that. Focus on the now because any prospective partner you are going to be talking to now is not privy to your inner memory bank and they will only see you as you present yourself to them in that moment. Turning a blind eye to the past? Do it! If you stop paying attention to the past and everything the ego is flashing in your mind jumping around in your head hopping look at me looooook at me look at meeeeeeee! Agree with me that you suuuuuuck! AAARRRGGGGG! Turn that blind eye to the past! Do it!

Don't dismiss the work you have already done because external work is also inner work just as inner work is also outer work. As an example, if we are learning a new skill, at first it's uncomfortable and unnatural to us. Although, as we do this new skill it becomes ingrained in our psyche and eventually we can perform it reflexively and unconsciously. We have internally wired ourselves to behave externally according to the pattern we set for ourselves through habituation. Faith is a powerful tool in our personal work, it's an inner tool that creates a fulfilled experience in life because it is also exercised externally through words and deeds but it seems you may have been neglecting to have faith in your work. Find that faith force that resides in your willful intention and exercise it in doing your personal work, both inner and outer, all of it. Doubting yourself rarely, if ever, leads to fulfillment. If I would give any direction in searching it would be to not do any deep digging at all, let it come to your attention on it's own, if it doesn't, is it really there? Of course if it is relevant to your lack of fulfillment the ego will bring it to mind because it wants the attention on it. When it does get brought to attention, then examine it. What are the accompanying thoughts, feelings, images, the memories and inner dialog that are present with it? Our mind will tell us what's relevant and then we can do our work on those things that are connected to the lack of fulfillment in our experience instead of needlessly trying to fix things that may not even be broken, so to speak, leading to much fruitless work that may just end of frustrating us with the issue still unresolved. We don't need to dig just for the sake of doing it! Just observe the ego working in the mind doing what it does, it will bring all these unsatisfactory thoughts, feelings and ideas to attention(awareness). What I found is that it's usually just one or two motives that are the root of the unrest that feeds much of the misery regardless of how many varieties of manifestation in us that it appears to take form as. Once you become aware of those one or two keys to the unrest you can work on those and you will likely find that much of it all will be resolved through it, plus some things you aren't even aware being related to it. One of the effective methods I used is to detach from the root causes, the ego will do everything it can to get you to care about it, to invest your whole being into endorsing what it values in identifying. Simply unplugging the cord to it robs it of it's power. Replacing the power source with the love, peace and joy in faith will completely change your work since it likely is being powered through fearful thoughts and emotions right now. This will transform the work you have been doing into much more effective efforts in bringing well being to the whole experience in a fulfilling way. Peace.

I can agree it seems like so many will place hoops and obstacles in the way, in many degrees and levels of them, so it appears it's all one huge series of things one 'gotta do' before we can 'git it dun'. That's what transcending is all about though, 'being it' all the while regardless of what comes along, even if we are still plagued by 'undesirable(coughtrashcough)circumstances' you may be thinking you have to wait out. Actually, consciously transcending is 'being it' all the while, especially because of those things you may think you are waiting out. Will it change? Yes, it will change..... will it change into a way you seek?... maybe, maybe not, that depends on our inner work... but even if life becomes a less appreciated state of existence we can still 'be' the thing you think you are waiting the trash out to finally be. That's the point of transcending it, we see through awareness the absolute potential in the fulfilled state even though the mind, by way of the sensory fed brain, experiences the ebb and flow of existence filled with the trash... and the treasure. The only influence we have is in the present moment to be whatever we intend to be in that moment and the moment-um of that fill each unfolding moment...um. Of course letting go of expectations, another facet of the mind's paradigm, that once transcended allows us to be at peace with the outcome regardless of what it brings. So transcend the trappings and observe it all with the peace of being in awareness of the absolute potential fulfilled, that is enlightenment! Be it now! It's that simple even if the mind doesn't want to believe it and tries to convince there needs to be a complicated process to wait out.

I beat my ego in chess every time because I know all it's moves.

Perfect can mean 'without flaws' but it also can mean 'complete'. The logical part of our mind fixates on the 'without flaws' meaning but it may be that some are attempting to express a completeness when they use the word perfect. So when some say the universe is perfect it baffles the logical mind when they see the misery and suffering in the world and question it being perfect by interpreting it as without flaws. Another example of words falling short for expressing.

It's spiritualist rhetoric that is illustrating a contrast in differing mindsets of being awake in awareness or asleep to awareness. Some people take it more literally in understanding, some more metaphorically, find whatever interpretation works for you and be at peace with it. If there are other meanings you gain through your own inner work then let those understandings illuminate your own life but be conscious that spiritual work is subjective so they may be specified to your own experience and not universal.

Is it any surprise the mind is under the ideological delusion that removing ideological delusion is the way to spiritual awakening? Spiritual awakening isn't just transcending the "false" in our mind, it's transcending all of it, including the "truth" in our mind. What confounds the mind about spiritual awakening is that it's not a process of the mind, it's transcending the processes of the mind.

@LifeandDeath I hear people say that about awareness, too. Although, my feeble human mind can be aware of it being aware even with the load of manifest ego conscious of itself so absolute consciousness is infinitely much more aware and we have the ability to tap that through our own awareness.

@LifeandDeath Our consciousness in it's most illuminated state is aware that it is awareness which manifests in the mind as our self conscious of itself. As we awaken our awareness to being aware our ego awakens to itself being an awakened awareness.... monkey see monkey do.... hehe Duality is just a paradigm of the mind, one that it uses to 2d "model" reality but awakening is like a quantum collapse in our consciousness so entangles infinite potential.

Well, we can be aware of our non-dual nature, that's what awakening is and enlightenment is us being aware of living in that nature, which the mind may never be able to understand.

As interesting and enticing all the information out there is to explore it is helpful to recognize it is the ego that can get preoccupied with all the ideas, concepts, methods, techniques and explanations of spirituality as a means of justifying itself. There is no real deep enlightenment work, it's uncomplicated, the depth and complication can come in trying to get the mind to get out of the way of enlightenment, which is simple in nature. When we are mindful of the present moment that is all enlightenment is, no ideas and concepts, no methods or techniques, it's simply being present in the moment. Obviously the mind will wander or it will constantly being trying to quantify and identify the experience so it can "remember" it.for reference. This is what distracts us from being present and interrupts the enlightenment experience so will interfere with the momentum, for a lack of a better word. in our consciousness. This is why people have amazingly powerful enlightenment experiences on psychedelics because it chemically inhibits the mind from disrupting the experience in our consciousness. The key to bringing this to every day life is to cultivate our mind to inhibit it's own natural tendencies to interrupt the enlightenment experience by identifying and labeling everything. All the information we will be exposed to in spiritual circles is actually more fodder for distraction, keep it simple, just do the simple task of staying present and all the understanding gained from it will be spontaneous revelations that is relevant to your own path. Reading the stories of everybody's experience doesn't replace our own and much of the information we may learn from those other's stories is virtually useless. Get back to living your life with what you got going on and if you want to expand your spiritual presence just stick to being present in the moment, there's not much more to enlightenment than that anyway. It's kind of disappointing for the information seeking mind to remove it's fixation from the process but no amount of philosophical understanding will culminate in an enlightenment experience, it's the simple exercise of being present. Those "amplified" experiences of enlightenment we can have and see from well known speakers will happen in us when we bring every aspect of our consciousness in unity of being present I'm speaking to you from experience, not theory learned from other people's stories. Peace.

Thinking and believing one knows the truth is a delusion.

The way you are thinking and feeling about it is understandable. People close to you in real life, they are more likely to hear things they don't agree with and still be respectful with you. On the internet the electronic separation and relative anonymity allows people to be less respectful with others and it seems they have less ability to stomach a differing opinion gracefully. In this technological environment the attacks some will launch are vicious and the escalating outrage over insignificant words is the norm. So it's understandable if someone would want to avoid attracting the ire of people who find words so intolerable they cannot restrain themselves. Some people thrive in this climate, they enjoy the hostility, welcome the attention even if it's negative and seek out the controversial topics to empower themselves in self aggrandizement by it. Although, it seems you are more empathetic of others and don't wish to instigate harsh feelings from just words so self censor. Nobody else can decide for you what you can bear or what topics are suitable for you to express yourself on. Find your peace and joy in doing whatever it is you choose to do.