Joseph Maynor

Curious

@Alii This is why enlightenment is the gateway to personal development. All your problems are illusions. Heaven is a choice you can make right now. And you don't need anything materially to enter Heaven. Once you let go, that's when you surge forward, paradoxically. It's funny that so much monkey-chatter is required to become enlightened, yet enlightenment is the absence of monkey-mind. That's the paradox of paradoxes. The highest paradox! Illusion is needed to become enlightened, yet enlightenment is the ditching of all illusion. So, all these people who pooh-pooh monkey-mind should realize it is a necessary path to enlightenment. You don't go from 10 to 40 without passing through 20 and 30 first. It's real easy to stand at 40 and say -- yeah don't worry about theory, just practice. This is not how it works. You gotta chew theory until your mouth is bleeding from all corners, and you finally stand there exhausted thinking -- I get that this ain't gonna work now. But you have to get there, you can't just realize this intellectually and bypass the screwing-up. This is a banging-your-head-against-the-wall kind of getting, not some epiphany you get reading a book listening to Mozart in the comfort of your feather bed. You didn't learn how to walk by reading a book. You stumbled around and finally came to the result over time. Same thing with enlightenment. You stumble into and out of one trap and into the next one. Smarties are just people who see where you are and likely don't see where they are. It takes another smarter-smartie to identify the smartie's trap, and so on and on ad infinitum.

@Nahm Toe sensations are self-sensing. Getting rid of that mine is gonna be tough.

First one is theory. Second one is pragmatic.

Seems like the final step is dropping need to know and need to believe. Releasing need to conceptualize reality, need for right answer, need for understanding and clarification.

@Dodo The Self is Absolute Infinity. Ego is more extensive than we believe: It is not just the I-thought. It is our entire human life. It is finite perspective. It is the belief that the distinction life-death is real. It is the illusion of feeling alive. It it feeling finite in any way; thingness is just a single distinction among many possible equally relative "sayings" about reality. Now I understand why Leo said true ego-death is like true physical death. This is not just a rearranging of beliefs. This is how the Self/Absolue Infinity be. How it be ain't got nothing to do with finiteness. This is a bigger enlightenment than most people consider. I say be because the Self/Absolute infinity is not a thought-story or an experience. It is a being of the Truth.

@Not a shaolin monk Absolute infinity is the Self. So, if you are not experiencing senses that cause you to conclude and sense the thought "the wall is real", then there is no thought-story about a wall existing. Reality is just one unified flow. All distinctions are finite. The wall is not a separate item existentially from the rest of the flow of Nature. In fact, thinking of those experiences as denoting a thing is a thought, thought-story, belief. All beliefs are existentially false. They may be good scaffolding, but beliefs are just more thought-stories, and therefore at odds with the Truth since all thought-stories are illusory. The Truth is egoless Self-aware experience. Experience is not belief. Beliefs are thoughts within the flow of experience. Beliefs try to define the Truth from being an experience within the Truth. Like an engineer thinking he can create a true human being through technology alone. See the problem? It's an unconscious ignorance, fantasy about reality. The Truth, reality contains no distinctions existentially, that is just a thought-story within the egoless, Self-aware field of sensations. A thought speaking way out of turn.

@Not a shaolin monk The wall doesn't exist. That's a thought-story. To say anything exists is conceptual. What is relevant is the sensations in your perceptual field in a moment.

All that is real is your sense experience, including thoughts sensed, but the meanings of the thoughts are illusory. So when you see your hand, what exists are the sensations sensed in that moment. When you turn away, you may still believe the hand exists, but what you're sensing there is a thought and a thought-story. The belief that your hand exists is a thought-story -- even if you are looking at your hand when saying this!

Do this exercise.

@Principium Nexus Read Wittgenstein's theory of Math. The later theory not the Tractatus theory. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein-mathematics/

I would wager that all of the moderators are more enlightened than me.

There's the egoic self; there's the external world; there's the egoic self in the external world. All illusions. All thought-stories in the mind rather than actual traits of reality. We actively generate the world through our expectations/ cravings of what we seek. This is why being mindful of seeking is probably very important to be mindful of. Let go of knowing and get into a true state of not knowing. This is the only true knowledge, counter-intuitively. Should we expect any other result? Us upright primates?

Or is awareness a passive quality that is actual awareness in the moment, the awareness of the Self rather than the ego Any sense of controlling awareness would be an egoic illusion. Sure, the Self is watching awareness change, and maybe the ego's illusion of changing or increasing awareness, but those changes are merely passively sensed by the higher-order awareness of the Self, which is just passively observing what is, what is actually experienced. The Self takes no action, including managing mindfulness or awareness. Nature causes all that. Am I right? The Self is just noticing what is experienced.

@Anna1 Then how can Atman = Brahman. If I am a perspective, how can I also be the anti-perspective? Does that make sense? Can you see what I am pointing to? I realize we are like deaf people trying to hunt and point around with language with a greater or lesser effectiveness -- which often has more to do with boldness than anything. The audacity to discourse. How can my limited perspective equal the total perspective? I realize Leo answers this in the below video. But humor me with your take! Let's see.

I'm talking about the true Self, not the egoic self. The egoic self is an illusion. The True self . . . . (what?) See? Please explain your insights. Now, if you say something, give your reason for your conclusion. Your reason for your conclusion is 99.9% more insightful than the conclusion you reach. Then we have something to look into. Some new fodder to root around in and look for something good. Like a new pan-full of dirt for the crazed, hopeful gold-miner. Paraphrases from Leo's first video on Absolute Infinity: Reality is just a collection of distinctions. A perspective is only made out of distinctions. All contrasts between things are distinctions. Existence versus non-existence is a distinction. We think of ourselves as existing and are opposed to non-existence. But this is our Human perspective, and this is a relative perspective. From God’s perspective, the most objective perspective possible, there is no distinction in reality between existence and non-existence. Boundaries and distinctions are not objective things. All of these boundaries, distinctions are relative.

Does the possibility-space of perspectives limit the upper and lower bounds of absolute infinity? If not, give a few sentences to correct me. Doesn't the concept of possibility-space reek of Human perspective? How can we conceive of a possibility-space that is objective, stripped of monkey-mind. Possibility-space? Is this an objective concept? A concept stripped of Ape speak. What does a dog think about possibility-space? What does a bat think about possibility-space? What does a jellyfish think about possibility-space? Yet, reality, as objectively contrued using our model of possibility-space, would have to consist of both the existence and non-existence of all of the perspectives of those organisms too, as well as every other possible perspective. Reality has to contain everything and nothing. I realize all this is scaffolding to point to something, but I want to make sure I grok the theory right or else I'm gonna be looking the wrong way. Don't want to do that. I'm jealous of my time. Watch this video on point:

@Dodo You can't do anything except increase awareness. And even this is happening by accident, you are not increasing awareness -- awareness is being increased. Higher awareness is caused by Nature. Sounds like you need to let go more. You don't have any control. Trying to control or taking thoughts too seriously just causes emotional pain which screws up the systems of your body-mind complex, which is what is causing your suffering and stunting your "progress". You just need to increase awareness and let go. Watch yourself solve your true problems. Maybe you need to change. Let yourself change. Stop trying to interfere. You aren't helping. "Progress" means what your body-mind complex would do without all the added neurosis your ego is creating. That added neurosis is what wrenches the system, paradoxically. And you think you are helping yourself. This is egoic. There is no you to help yourself. The best thing you can do is live this Truth. Completely let go of Dodo and just enjoy the ride. Stop trying to do. There is no egoic you that can act or control reality. There is no action or control. You are watching Nature do what Nature does. You are part of Nature. The Self is a constant, omnipresent, field of awareness that is noticing fleeting experiences flow in one giant, monistic, blob. The Self doesn't do anything but sense experience (thoughts are sensed too and part of experience). Awareness is egoic in the sense that the ego needs to have its awareness raised. In contrast, the Self needs no raising of awareness. That would be absurd. The Self would be laughing at us and observing us trying to define it. See the problem? All the Self does is sense what is real, what is True. The Self is no thing, it is the sensor of things, and the field of perception for all reality, experience, concepts, thoughts, including space and time. The Self laughs at the audacity of space and time to define reality. What space and time are are thoughts that are perceived by the Self, not traits of reality. It would be like you trying to create a realistic cyborg of a human being containing a Self. Not possible. You might infinitely approximate this, but you would always lack the magical missing piece to make it a reality, to make it the Truth. Watch this video on point:

@Juan Cruz Giusto This video from Leo is also on point. I just watched it again. This is a great sequel to his Karma video. This video really explains where the rubber meets the road with higher consciousness living.

Elaborate further. Give us a couple of sentences. Idealism and bicentrism mean everything and nothing without some kind of contextual stipulation, definition, or clarification.

@Edvard Awareness is increasing, but you gotta get to the point where you completely release because there is no free will. That's the final counter-intuitive move. You have no control, that's an illusion. Remember this: Enlightenment is not attaining anything. You just realize what is already True. You are already enlightened, except the ego keeps throwing monkey wrenches in the gears to hide this Truth from you. The ego tortures you with neuroses, addictions, and distractions to keep you from noticing this reality. So, awareness is the only thing that can fix this. There is no you to act. That is an illusion. Action is taking place, and you are aware of it, but you're also half-down the rabbit hole of illusion too. The mind is in cahoots with the ego. So, you gotta put the breaks on your mind. That's the process, initially. That's about where I am now with enlightenment. The mind is the enemy. Thought-story is evil existentially speaking. Practically speaking, do whatever you want with thought-story. But existentially, thought is a no-go. The best you can get is a good scaffolding theory that sets your awareness up in the right way. Increased awareness needs to be caused in you. That's what all this monkey-chatter and self-inquiry does. And you are not even in control over whether you become enlightened or not. It's a luck of the draw. A random variant of Nature. But don't try to control the mind. Paradoxically, only increased awareness dissolves the ego. Accept all thoughts, and gently try to release the negative ones. Disown all thoughts -- they are not your thoughts. There is no you at the center of experiences, including sensations and thoughts. All there is is a self-aware sensations, feelings, or thoughts, with no egoic center. The egoic center causes a lot of the problems as well as the belief in an external world. Those two paradigms are deadly -- the egoic paradigm (belief in an egoic self) and the external world paradigm (belief in an external world). Watch: And watch this one: And this awesome one by Emerald:

Meditating by stilling the mind. I did this for like a year and is bad because it is a kind of self-interference.

There is no me that is at the center of the self-aware phenomenal field. Sensations in the phenomenal field do not connect to a me. That is a false egoic belief. This is tricky.

I'm starting to flatten the illusion out of the Naive Reality paradigm. Do they occur at any time? This is getting very counter-intuitive. You can kinda appreciate this if you set a radio next to your bed. Then ask yourself -- is the sound I hear in space or time? Sound is the sensation of sound that you experience. You may sense a directionality to the sound, like it is a vector. Does this mean that sound is directional? Or is this a belief laid on top of the raw sensation of the sound itself? Have you tried to unpack this? The Self can't really be thought of as being distributed across any 3 dimensional space. I know we often use this model to explain the Self, but it is false. The camera can't go from a cone shape to a sphere. That's just going from one finite model to another finite model. How can we be a self-aware field of sensations outside of space and time? It seems that this cannot even be conceived of. This is where theory has to melt into practice right here; where theory ran out of gas. "The Absolute Now, feeling like God looking in on Himself." Watch this video.

@JustinS No.