Can we define an awakening once and for all

[Inliytened1]

12 minutes ago, James123 said:

@Sugarcoat enlightenment is simply being where you already are. That's it.

That's not it.  That's a trap. There is actually awakening from this dream.

Edited June 4 by Inliytened1

[Carl-Richard]

Awakening is a radical and often sudden change in how you experience the world on a moment-to-moment level. The type of awakening which is probably most referenced is awakening to Oneness or non-duality, which coincides with the loss of self-referential thinking and experience of self in space and time, reflected in the deactivation of the Default Mode Network (DMN).

Spiritual transformation is when the awakening creates a lasting but incomplete change where some parts of yourself will never be the same. Your first awakening tends to coincide with a spiritual transformation. For non-duality spiritual transformations, this coincides with a lasting relative deactivation of the DMN.

Enlightenment is when the awakened state becomes your new baseline, i.e. what you operate from most of the time (~90% of the time). After many awakenings in different ways and contexts, the tower topples over and flips. And for non-duality enlightenment, this coincides with a lasting and more significant deactivation of the DMN.

Your enlightened state might refine over time in subtle ways, maybe filling in the remaining 10% and for non-duality enlightenment maybe eliminating self-referential thinking altogether, or through more embodied manifestations (in the case of non-duality: purifying egoic responses/behavioral patterns, contractions, "defilements").

I used awakening to non-duality to illustrate each term, but you can substitute it with any type of awakening; awakening to God, Love, even intellectual awakenings; but of course, the terms are less commonly used in this way. An example of an intellectually focused (or moral) spiritual transformation I had was the transition from a hedonistic to a eudaimonic value system.

Edited June 5 by Carl-Richard

[James123]

3 minutes ago, Inliytened1 said:

That's not it.  That's a trap. There is actually awakening from this dream.

İ did not mean the self or dream whatsoever, i mean from what we are already are. 

[Inliytened1]

6 minutes ago, James123 said:

İ did not mean the self or dream whatsoever, i mean from what we are already are. 

Ahh..well that can make someone think they can't wake-up .  You see you can't put the horse in front of the Cart.  That's the same as saying everyone is already enlightened.  Yes, they are in a sense because everything is the Absolute already.   But there is a distinct shift in which one realizes they are the Absolute. 

Edited June 4 by Inliytened1

[James123]

12 minutes ago, Inliytened1 said:

Ahh..well that can make someone think they can't wake-up .  You see you can't put the horse in front of the Cart.  That's the same as saying everyone is already enlightened.  Yes, they are in a sense because everything is the Absolute already.   But there is a distinct shift in which one realizes they are the Absolute. 

İt will be sounds little selfish, but from this point actually there is no others. I can't really point myself or others anymore. I can't find myself in the body nor mind / can you?

Edited June 4 by James123

[Inliytened1]

2 minutes ago, James123 said:

İt will be sounds little selfish, but from this point actually there is no others. I can't really point myself or others anymore. I can't find myself in the body nor mind / can you?

You will never find yourself because you are nothing.

[James123]

5 minutes ago, Inliytened1 said:

You will never find yourself because you are nothing.

Definitely, see you are already

[Inliytened1]

5 minutes ago, James123 said:

Definitely, see you are already

But beginners don't know this stuff.  So you teaching advanced material will trap them.  This is part of the problem with Phil's forum. There is no appreciation for that.

[James123]

4 hours ago, Inliytened1 said:

But beginners don't know this stuff.  So you teaching advanced material will trap them.  This is part of the problem with Phil's forum. There is no appreciation for that.

Yes, but explanation of enlightenment is always advance.

[Breakingthewall]

It is something totally simple, it is realizing what you are. What you are is not definable, since it is the reality, and reality is the absence of limits. It is not realizing the fact that you are infinite, but what infinite is, what it has always been and will always be.

The infinite, as is obvious, takes infinite forms, it cannot not do so, since if it did not, it would be finite. What we are right now is one of those forms, so enlightenment is realizing what you are by going through the form, which is a relative, cyclical appearance of the infinite.

Enlightenment is that the infinite perceives itself through the form, and with this it stops being a prisoner of the form and frees itself. The infinite is conscious and total, although impersonal, since it does not have a center of perception, so it is difficult to let go of the self, the center, so that the infinite perceives itself without any obstacle. If there is any obstacle, perception will be distorted and deceptive, infinity will be perceived as form, god, whatever.

Infinity is nothing and is the potential of everything, and is perfect, complete and total. The word enlightenment evokes the light that the opening of the structure of form allows you to flood the dimension of existence that you are right now. You can call this light love or whatever

[Norbert Somogyi]

I don't have a direct awakening experience so I am a little hesitant to respond here, but here is my take.

The word de-fine can be used to mark the boundaries of something (amongst other things). This is like the antithesis of the infinitude of awakening, kind of like an impossible request. Isn't it?

[zurew]

19 minutes ago, Norbert Somogyi said:

The word de-fine can be used to mark the boundaries of something (amongst other things). This is like the antithesis of the infinitude of awakening, kind of like an impossible request. Isn't it?

No its not an impossible request. 

Yes all definitions are necessarily exclusionary, but infinity itself is exclusionary in certain ways. You can have an infinite set (lets say we give label "P" to a set that contains all prime numbers). If I bring up number 2 - that would be a prime number, but we still wouldn't call it P, because it is just a member of P. The same way we wouldn't call P number 2, becasue even though P contains number 2, it is different from number 2.

In short - we differentiate the set from the members of said set . So you can have an all encompassing set (S), and you can still differentiate the members of S  from S.

Edited June 5 by zurew

[Norbert Somogyi]

14 minutes ago, zurew said:

No its not an impossible request. 

Yes all definitions are necessarily exclusionary, but infinity itself is exclusionary in certain ways. You can have an infinite set (lets say we give label "P" to a set that contains all prime numbers). If I bring up number 2 - that would be a prime number, but we still wouldn't call it P, because it is just a member of P. The same way we wouldn't call P number 2, becasue even though P contains number 2, it is different from number 2.

In short - we differentiate the set from the members of said set . So you can have an all encompassing set (S), and you can still differentiate the members of S  from S.

I think I get what you mean, but the mathematical (necessarily exclusionary by your words) infinities you seem to be referring to are merely finitely infinite if you get what I mean. On the other hand judging by the words of Leo and all the discussion (constructive or not) regarding awakening, that the infinity you get to experience is totally infinite and has no bounds whatsoever. Therefore even talking about it is reductive in a sense, since words can not make you grasp infinity by their design alone. 

Then again it can be useful to determine what degree of awakening we are trying to define (there goes the infinity I guess), and can such degrees even be mapped through our current toolkit of understanding. Furthermore, what about human biology? Doesn't that kind of impose a limit to the degree of infinity you can experience?

[enchanted]

22 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

I feel many people describe it vaguely .
Not saying there is one correct definition or one version of it, can probably mean different things. I’m not afraid of conceptualizing either, it doesn’t hurt anything, I don’t hold onto ideas, no thought is able to exactly grasp at anything anyways. 

I had one massive shift which I would describe as a permanent dissolution of my mental self/mental reality. It was like my sense of self was permanently detached from my mind. I remember I stood in my kitchen and boom my entire being was released from attachment in the mind and it was permanent. 

I don’t consider myself enlightened because I have a sense of self still but it’s not a self attached to the mind/mental self. im just sharing this description based on direct experience

22 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

 

Defining anything is always tricky. This especially applies to the strangle-loopy nature of awakening. 

 

[Breakingthewall]

then, once you perceive your unlimited nature, which perceives itself as perfect and complete, a process of transformation begins in the psyche in which the form, the relative, is seen as an expression of the absolute, therefore absolute, complete and perfect.

The dimension: a methamphetamine addict who rapes his grandmother is perceived as perfect and complete, the same as the dimension of the planet Uranus, or a rat, and the understanding of the cosmos and manifest reality begins to be deeper. until where? nobody knows

[zurew]

1 hour ago, Norbert Somogyi said:

I think I get what you mean, but the mathematical (necessarily exclusionary by your words) infinities you seem to be referring to are merely finitely infinite if you get what I mean. On the other hand judging by the words of Leo and all the discussion (constructive or not) regarding awakening, that the infinity you get to experience is totally infinite and has no bounds whatsoever. Therefore even talking about it is reductive in a sense, since words can not make you grasp infinity by their design alone. 

Notice what you did there.  You managed to differentiate infinity (that which contains everything or that which is boundless) from infinitely large number sets (only containing numbers).

A table is a member or part of infinity, however it is different from infinity. Infinity has certain characteristics and attributes that tables don't have.

If you want to say  that you can't exhaustively define it (like listing all the parts and connections between those parts) thats fine, but that applies to other definitions as well. Like I wouldn't be able to give a perfectly clear boundary regarding what should be categorized as a pond (like exactly how many water drops are in a pond), but I can still differentiate it from rivers and from seas and from oceans.

The same applies to infinity. When someone says define X - that person doesn't necessarily asking for a completely exhaustive definition, but you can narrow it down and use pointers.

Edited June 5 by zurew

[koops]

So funny. Supposedly this is Absolute Truth, yet people still define it differently and dont agree with a definiton.

[James123]

4 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

it is realizing what you are.

That's it. 

[Sugarcoat]

15 hours ago, Inliytened1 said:

No self (you're not the self you thought you were)  is awakening.   All subsequent awakenings spawn from that.   

I think that’s enlightenment yea or awakening could call it both. Total wipeout of a sense of self.
I was just thinking because the shift I had was permanent and massively profound but didn’t wipe my sense of self out, but did erase this attachment to the mind/mental self or something so it’s interesting where that falls. I don’t worry about conceptualizing because it doesn’t change anything 

Edited June 5 by Sugarcoat

[Sugarcoat]

2 hours ago, koops said:

So funny. Supposedly this is Absolute Truth, yet people still define it differently and dont agree with a definiton.

It’s tricky yet simple. Also difference if someone is talking from direct experience vs heard from teachings and others.