Joseph Maynor

Got it. One of the things I have to be mindful of is when the ego wants to sustain the belief that my awareness comes through the eyes. I need to expand Awareness to all Truth. This can only be done through increasing Awareness and mindfulness, through "practice".

Is this my awareness, or is this an illusion? Does this show that my awareness is often contingent on the position of my head? This appears to be a myopic kind of awareness, not the majestic awareness that we like to think we are. If I am not my body, why is my awareness so confined to being intimately correlated with the position of my body? // Leo described the Self as pure, transparent, empty awareness -- or presence. The essence of the Self, or empty awareness, is to hold experience and all of reality. The Self is not located anywhere.

I love your posts! I am reading the Upanishads and Brahma Sutras right now. Here's my understanding. The Buddhists generally do not think there is a Self or Absolute. I take that to mean that they do not think that Awareness is real. They are like Materialists. They do not give reality to Awareness, to consciousness. So, yeah there is consciousness of things, but consciousness itself is not real, not True. So, there is no Self per se. There is no Brahman, no Absolute. All there is is disparate phenomena without a higher-order thing above or underlying it. The Buddhists are kind of like Materialists and the Hindus are more like Phenomenologists -- if you want to draw parallels to Western Philosophy. What is cool about Advaita Vedanta is the Buddhist influence on Hinduism, namely the focus on mindfulness and a certain kind of hard-nosed Empiricist attitude, which is strong in Buddhism. So, Advaita Vedanta is a certain kind of synthesis between non-dual Hinduism and Buddhism. I think that's what Adi Shankara was up to. It's a pretty nice marriage. Shankara is like an Immanuel Kant of Indian Philosophy, a synthesizer. I'm not endorsing Kant by the way. I am very opposed to Kantian Philosophy in general (but I respect him and his thought a lot and he was a huge advance); however, I see a similar kind of synthesis happening with Kant's thought in Western Philosophy, with his integration of and transcendence of Empiricism and Rationalism, two formerly well-entrenched Western Philosophy traditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Shankara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant

The mind doesn't exist. It is a thought-story. What we call the mind is just the ego, including but not limited to the illusion of control, and thoughts (including thought-stories) in awareness. There is no reason to talk about my mind or your mind. Do you agree? If so, why do we do this? Also, the same logic applies to the body. There is no distinction in awareness. Awareness is all of a piece.

@Principium Nexus Correct. You can be aware of thoughts as things from an existential standpoint, but when you get sucked into their stories in the existential standpoint, that's where you get sucked into delusion. Does this make sense? One thing I am doing is trying to only acknowledge the thoughts as things, but using awareness to not allowing the thought-stories to send my awareness down idiotic rabbit-holes. All the rabbit-holes cause suffering because you have no control anyway. But you gotta be careful. Only use awareness. Do not try to control. All control is egoic illusion. Just be super mindful of what thoughts are when the monkey-mind starts throwing them at you. Separate the Truth of the thoughts from the illusory thought-story part. Watch this video. It's great and explains this. Also watch this one.

@Principium Nexus You are the Truth. You are the Self. You are Brahman. You are the contents of experience stripped of thought. You are the whole of awareness. You are the holder of the ego as thought. You are not the voice. You are the Truth basking in itself. Don't think of yourself as the screen, that is concept, belief. Whatever you are is nothingness. Pure emptiness. Emptiness is anti-conceptual. That's a huge hint. But all somethingness occurs within emptiness. So you are all non-conceptual somethingness too. The Self is God.

I've heard people say this. To me it was self-acceptance or self-love that started to give me a lot of shifts. Large ego was more of a reaction to the self losing its footing in the earlier shifts of enlightenment. Like a bully losing his confidence, neurotically flailing his power around nonsensically.

@The White Belt Yes. The next step is to be the Truth. Awareness and being merge into one. That's true bliss. This is accomplished by simply realizing that that's what you already are.

Yes. But they can also build self-acceptance too, which is still egoic but a necessary step on the path towards enlightenment. But, yeah, for enlightenment, the work is to transcend the self, not to try and manipulate or program it with affirmations. Affirmations pre-suppose a self-image you are clinging to. Once you transcend the self-image, affirmations become pointless.

After all, how is Self-awareness differentiated from being the Truth -- it seems that is is a distinction that is conceptual, not real. If it is pointing to something True or real, what is it pointing to. Is Self-awareness baked-into being or is it a separate "sense" so to speak?

Ok, I'll take your word for it. What do you want, an argument? How would that rabbit hole run?

Just wondering.

@Arkandeus But isn't saying they are already enlightened a judgment too? And that hurts you because you are comparing yourself with them. There are some objective metrics to enlightenment. If you deny this, that is a judgment too, and it is false. We don't have to be relativists. You can withhold judgment, but you are making judgments too, not just withholding judgment. There's a difference between skepticism and relativism. Your position is more relativism than skepticism. And that's a position, a judgment. And it's false. It's concept, not the Truth. The skeptic, by contrast, would not advance their own point of view, their own judgment, their own partition of reality. You do advance a point of view. And you are either asking us to take you seriously or not. There'a s sense in which you are partitioning reality too here. But maybe you're giving with one hand and taking away with another, but that is just the illusion of not making a judgment. The only way to not make a judgment is to not make a judgment. That's the position of the skeptic. Once you open Pandora's Box and make your own judgment, you are doing what you are complaining about. That's a trap.

Curious. Playing music means creating music, including but not limited to playing a musical instrument. I play jazz trumpet, but I stopped a couple of months ago because I became convinced that music was slowing down my growth. I stopped listening to music too at that time.

Having songs playing in my head all the time was feeding my monkey-mind.

I am fortunate I've never been addicted to success. I had my head in the philosophy books too much for that. So I had the opposite problem, kind of an eschewing of success, a pooh-poohing of success. And that caused a lot of suffering in my life and for my business. I think there's a balance. Do your business, but try to keep it as green as possible. Chasing success was something I was never able to do, although there were moments in my life where I really wanted to. Those all backfired on me. Ego ultimately backfires. Business isn't inherently bad though, as long as you keep your priorities straight and your head screwed on tight. Business is a way of sharing your gifts with the world. I have a little business myself which could use a couple heaps of love and care. We forget that our businesses are like organisms, like systems, which need the right kinds of care to survive, let alone flourish.

Just curious. I'm listening to the audiobook myself again now.

Radical acceptance and letting go is a necessary but not sufficient condition for enlightenment. I read a pamphlet that is free online summarizing some of her stuff. Leo's material reflects the same ideas basically. Here it is! Check it out. http://thework.com/sites/thework/downloads/Little Book.pdf

@Anna1 I no longer need to seek. But to get to this point I did seek heavily, as you and everyone on here is aware of. Heavy seeking on here for 1 month. But before I came on here I was having enlightenment experiences without realizing it as such for about 1 year. What happened to your picture?

Just curious. The sound of nothingness is the only sound that remains.

Just curious. I know we tend to focus on the theory, but the theory and the experience are two different things.

Major progress on path to enlightenment. I wouldn't be able to do it without the shaping of people here. You need feedback and inquiry for enlightenment work.

I like your idea that "Wakeful people have set up systems to help them follow their core values automatically." This is key. I appreciate your outlines. Some ideas that I have collated myself about systems that might interest you: 1. Systems are all about balance and harmony. 2. Systems respond to outside forces in complex ways. 3. There are no absolute truths for Stage Yellow. All there is is a bunch of partial perspectives. And every perspective is partial. 4. Almost everything can be thought of as a system. Almost all problems are systemic problems. 5. Belief in your beliefs is dogma and it's what is holding back every stage below Stage Yellow. 6. Stage Yellow is ecological in their thinking. 7. Systems work in counter-intuitive ways. They don't work in overly simplistic ways. 8. When there's a larger system at work that we don't understand, this is a cause of failure and problems. 9. Stage Yellow realizes that life is paradoxical. 10. Stage Yellow sees the world as perspectives and in shades of grey and sees the world as systems to solve the problems that they care about. 11. Systems resist you trying to change them. 12. The dogmatic person, every stage under Stage Yellow, pulls out the pitchfork when somebody offends them or attacks their worldview. This is an adversarial relationship with reality and life. Instead of getting defensive, look over what was said and see if there is something there or a way to expand your model or growth to cover the new facts. Stage Yellow has a robust model of the world. And Stage Yellow always assumes that they could be wrong and is open-minded. 13. The ego is a system. 14. If you feel that your perspective of the world is the Truth, you are not at Stage Yellow. 15. Stage Yellow sees the world from the perspective of interconnected systems. These systems interact with each other in interesting and counter-intuitive ways. The subconscious mind is also a system. To change a system you have to understand it first to avoid traps. 16. Think of systems as organisms and meta-organisms. 17. You are a conflicted system maintaining homeostasis. By raising awareness, the web of beliefs starts to restructure itself naturally. 18. When you get angry, stop and look at the big picture. Your point of view is not the dominant point of view. So what you judge as evil is not what evil is. There are no divisions. Your partition gets encroached upon because it's part of a larger system where encroachment happens. 19. Systems thinking requires that you start to step outside your self-centered view of the world. You have to be conscious enough to step outside of your own value system and genuinely care about other beings besides yourself and your tribe. 20. Systems are non-linear. This means that they are unpredictable and chaotic. 21. Stage Yellow gives up rationalism and absolute truth. 22. You're a distributed system not a centralized system. 23. Set realistic, pragmatic expectations regarding making change in your life. Expect that your subconscious mind and body systems will play tricks on you to resist the change to maintain homeostasis. 24. Think of everything as a system. 25. Problems are systemic and not personal. Poorly designed systems are creating the problems.

I understand. The nature of this forum presupposes a certain protocol regarding posing issues. It's the nature of the communication process to frame certain things certain ways, especially within a short amount of space. It's like trying to find subtlety in a bowl of white rice. You gotta be bold enough to ask questions though to get any answers.

Just curious. Sort of like one might reminisce of childhood, perhaps. I don't think you could go back to being egoic though. Not entirely anyway. Could you really go back to being 10 years old, even if you really wanted to?