Is enlightenment even possible?

[Breakingthewall]

8 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

Agreed. That’s my idea of enlightenment too 

Enlightenment is realizing that the existence is what you are and it's always here and now, and the appearance that is happening is irrelevant or less relevant. What you are is what exist, not how it appears. It's difficult because all of us are attached to the form, to the character. In fact seems impossible because the character can't imagine a reality without him as character, but he's irrelevant, the substance, the depth of this limitless moment is what exist, and it's possible to be open to its essence, to it limitless potential. This is always beyond the form, in any being. Everything is that.

[Sugarcoat]

10 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

Enlightenment is realizing that the existence is what you are and it's always here and now, and the appearance that is happening is irrelevant or less relevant. What you are is what exist, not how it appears. It's difficult because all of us are attached to the form, to the character. In fact seems impossible because the character can't imagine a reality without him as character, but he's irrelevant, the substance, the depth of this limitless moment is what exist, and it's possible to be open to its essence, to it limitless potential. This is always beyond the form, in any being. Everything is that.

I’d say I agree

[Salvijus]

On 2024-11-04 at 0:22 PM, Sugarcoat said:

Is enlightenment even possible?

Can a flower blossom? 

Can a rock turn into a brilliant crystal? 

Can a crawling worm transform into a flying butterfly? 

Can a dense fool become a translucent all radiating infinite presence, aka a sage or a mystic? 

The answer is yes. It's the natural destination in life. 

 

Edited November 10 by Salvijus

[Sugarcoat]

9 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

Can a flower blossom? 

Can a rock turn into a brilliant crystal? 

Can a crawling worm transform into a flying butterfly? 

Can a dense fool become a translucent all radiating presence, aka a sage or a mystic? 

The answer is yes. It's the natural destination in life. 

 

I also have this theory that everyone is slowly, over lifetimes even, getting closer to enlightenment. The self naturally dissolves very slowly . 

[Salvijus]

"how can it not be possible to be yourself?" 

That was another thought that came as a response to this. 

[Sugarcoat]

1 minute ago, Salvijus said:

"how can it not be possible to be yourself?" 

That was another thought that came as a response to this. 

I was thinking the other day. Isn’t it crazy how enlightenment which is seemingly the most obvious, natural, thing ever when it’s recognized is so damn hard to “see”? Like the one thing that is absolutely true is so hard to see. 99.99% of people walking around are caught up in their self illusion, how can an illusion be so strong. It’s crazy. 

[Salvijus]

1 hour ago, Sugarcoat said:

I was thinking the other day. Isn’t it crazy how enlightenment which is seemingly the most obvious, natural, thing ever when it’s recognized is so damn hard to “see”? Like the one thing that is absolutely true is so hard to see. 99.99% of people walking around are caught up in their self illusion, how can an illusion be so strong. It’s crazy. 

That's why I like "development" way of looking at spirituality more than "non-dual" way. It makes more sense

Edited November 10 by Salvijus

[Salvijus]

Here's another one. 

"is it possible to stop pretending"? 

Okay I'm done 

Edited November 10 by Salvijus

[UnbornTao]

54 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

Can a flower blossom? 

Can a rock turn into a brilliant crystal? 

Can a crawling worm transform into a flying butterfly? 

Can a dense fool become a translucent all radiating infinite presence, aka a sage or a mystic? 

The answer is yes. It's the natural destination in life. 

 

That's a fantasy. The natural destination of life isn't enlightenment. 

Unless you mean it in another sense, perhaps poetically.

Edited November 10 by UnbornTao

[Sugarcoat]

35 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

That's why I like "development" way of looking at spirituality more than "non-dual" way. It makes more sense

What do you mean by development vs non dual way?

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Sugarcoat said:

I was thinking the other day. Isn’t it crazy how enlightenment which is seemingly the most obvious, natural, thing ever when it’s recognized is so damn hard to “see”? Like the one thing that is absolutely true is so hard to see. 99.99% of people walking around are caught up in their self illusion, how can an illusion be so strong. It’s crazy. 

We have to remember the distinction between awakening and enlightenment again. Awakening, if we include the subtlest of glimpses, is actually not uncommon at all. It's in fact very common. In a 2009 Pew research poll of the US population, 49% said they have had "a moment of sudden religious insight or awakening": https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2009/12/29/mystical-experiences/. 30% of them were non-religious.

I know some people personally who have had them sober and who don't seem to practice any spirituality. However, like I said, enlightenment and the spiritual path in general is usually a process of dedicated focus and practice. Pursuing what is implied by the glimpses is very different from merely having them. Awakening is indeed a very fundamental part of the human psyche, but we have just become terribly good at tuning it out, distracting ourselves and forgetting when it does happen.

Edited November 10 by Carl-Richard

[Sugarcoat]

17 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

We have to remember the distinction between awakening and enlightenment again. Awakening, if we include the subtlest of glimpses, is actually not uncommon at all. It's in fact very common. In a 2009 Pew research poll of the US population, 49% said they have had "a moment of sudden religious insight or awakening": https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2009/12/29/mystical-experiences/. 30% of them were non-religious.

I know some people personally who have had them sober and who don't seem to practice any spirituality. However, like I said, enlightenment and the spiritual path in general is usually a process of dedicated focus and practice. Pursuing what is implied by the glimpses is very different from merely having them. Awakening is indeed a very fundamental part of the human psyche, but we have just become terribly good at tuning it out, distracting ourselves and forgetting when it does happen.

Cool thanks for sharing. I didn’t know it was that common. I wonder how many of those awakenings/glimpses/insights were non dual though. Maybe some have them but don’t recognize the non duality. 
 

I agree there is real dedication required in the pursuit of enlightenment. That’s what I’m looking into now. 
 

What do you mean by we have become good at “tuning it into out, distracting ourselves and forgetting” ?

 

I have also thought to myself about the flow state. The flow state can sometimes be a selfless state, so it’s kinda non dual but not recognized as such. So it’s like people can have glimpses regularly but it’s never permanent aka enlightenment. 

Edited November 10 by Sugarcoat

[Carl-Richard]

4 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

Cool thanks for sharing. I didn’t know it was that common. I wonder how many of those awakenings/glimpses/insights were non dual though. Maybe some have them but don’t recognize the non duality. 

There are certainly several ways to interpret "a moment of sudden religious insight or awakening". But I would posit that many of these do technically include a significant experience of oneness or non-duality, which again has varying degrees of profundity, which you could actually quantify: the frequency of self-referential thoughts (self-referential thoughts over time). The fewer self-referential thoughts, the more profound the experience.

You could place such experiences on a continuum, which technically stretches through all of human experience, even the most negative aspects, down to the deepest levels of depression, despair, psychotic self-hatred and terror. But of course, we're most interested in the upper parts of the continuum, and for that, I would include for example (from low to high):

• awe experiences (e.g. being struck by profound beauty, mindful nature experiences)
• deeply concentrated states with high energy (e.g. flow states, musical trances, sex, some psychedelic states) or profound stillness (e.g. seated meditation states)
• highly transformative experiences that people would rate as more profound than the previous experiences, even sex and psychedelics (read about this e.g. here), which is probably what most people would refer to as "proper" awakening experiences
• and of course enlightenment itself where self-referential thoughts are virtually eliminated at baseline.

I understand the compulsion to scoff at these "lower" experiences and not want to include them in the concept of awakening (because they're not "spiritual" enough"), but if you want to be rigorous and use the measure of self-referential thoughts (which is arguably "the" measure of non-duality), there is no consistent reason to make a typological distinction between them. It's simply a continuum of more self-referential thoughts to less self-referential thoughts.

I think this scoffing tendency is actually more about a spiritual "aesthetic" (call it New Age) than a substantial point. For example, you would probably be more likely to perceive awakening experiences associated with closed-eye meditation focusing on the breath as more "legitimate" than somebody sitting on a mountain top and taking in the view, or hell in Church taking in the sermon. But these are only differences in form.

While some forms (e.g. techniques) may be more conducive to elevating one's consciousness, as you know, non-duality itself is beyond form, and in the final analysis, it should not matter where you are having the experience. You can be more or less skeptical of people's claims depending on which forms are present, but regardless, the experience is still possible irrespective of forms.

And as for forms, as stated in my previous post, we are naturally inclined towards these experiences, as humans. They are our evolutionary bedrock. Self-referential thinking is a mindblowningly new invention; some estimates say only 50-70k years old. It would only be surprising if we were not able to slip back into these primordial habits of existing beyond the self-reflective self. In fact, it's surprising that we're not slipping back constantly.

Or actually, it's not so surprising when you compare the amount of thoughts (in general) between modern people and pre-modern tribal people. I remember seeing a figure of 60k thoughts vs. 1-6k thoughts, however, the 60k number could be dubious (here is an internet rabbit hole about that). According to the same dubious source (although my own reading generally agrees with it), most of these thoughts are repetitive (85%) and negative (79%), which skews towards self-referential thoughts. In other words, modern society is essentially a collective unenlightenment practice.

 

4 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

What do you mean by we have become good at “tuning it into out, distracting ourselves and forgetting” ?

Survival, especially in modern society, seems to select for that in a big way (thinking a lot about ourselves; self-referential thinking), at least how things are now.

 

4 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

I have also thought to myself about the flow state. The flow state can sometimes be a selfless state, so it’s kinda non dual but not recognized as such.

Yup. That's somewhere on the upper parts of continuum like I suggested above.

 

4 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

So it’s like people can have glimpses regularly but it’s never permanent aka enlightenment. 

It's usally not permanent. Like said with the "letting go"/attachment business, it's usually not as simple as putting yourself in high consciousness states. The real hurdle is the attachments. The attachments keep you returning to the lower states.

Edited November 11 by Carl-Richard

[Salvijus]

13 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

That's a fantasy. The natural destination of life isn't enlightenment. 

Unless you mean it in another sense, perhaps poetically.

If we look at the process of desire itself, all humans are secretly longing for the highest good in their life. For some it means money, for some it means relationships, for some it means a carrier etc. Everyone has their own idea of what the highest good in life is. Yet the only place that desire can find its fulfillment is in God, so it's only a question of time until that desire gets realized. And it will get realized because that desire does not come from ego, the desire for God can only come from God itself. And God will not fail to achieve his desires. 

Edited November 11 by Salvijus

[Salvijus]

12 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

What do you mean by development vs non dual way?

There're two ways to look at enlightenment:

1. It's a long and gradual process.

2. It's absolutely effortless and takes no time or distance. 

Both ways of looking are simultaneously true without contradiction. Just depends from what angle you're looking at. Sometimes I prefer to look from the "development" point of view more because nondual point of view can easily be misleading. 

Idk if that answers the question. 

Edited November 11 by Salvijus

[Salvijus]

13 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

That's a fantasy. The natural destination of life isn't enlightenment. 

Unless you mean it in another sense, perhaps poetically.

All life is constantly evolving is what I meant. Whatever you do or experience in life, in some shape or form it is contributing to your growth. 

Edited November 11 by Salvijus

[Sugarcoat]

30 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

There're two ways to look at enlightenment:

1. It's a long and gradual process.

2. It's absolutely effortless and takes no time or distance. 

Both ways of looking are simultaneously true without contradiction. Just depends from what angle you're looking at. Sometimes I prefer to look from the "development" point of view more because nondual point of view can easily be misleading. 

Idk if that answers the question. 

Ok I see

[Princess Arabia]

2 minutes ago, Sugarcoat said:

Ok I see

You still trying to get enlightened.

[Sugarcoat]

2 minutes ago, Princess Arabia said:

You still trying to get enlightened.

Yes

[Princess Arabia]

Just now, Sugarcoat said:

Yes

Ok, nice.