Is The Belief That Reality Is Real The Truth Or Is It Concept?

[Joseph Maynor]

Just curious.   Is this the Absolute or is it a perspective?  

Edited July 22, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Nahm]

@Joseph Maynor definitions matter here.  

Awareness is awareness.  

Belief is belief.

belief is not awareness.

asking if something is the truth is like asking if you got hit by a bus.

You know when you get hit by a bus.

You know when you are the Truth.

Vision, hearing, relationship with your body, clarity, love, compassion, laughter - all go through the roof. As if you're aware of them for the first time. It is impossible to remember what it was like before. Every time you try to remember, you laugh!!!

like how you see a small child - they're innocent, and sweet, they mess up, but they don't know and it's adorable!

That is how awareness sees Jo! Unconditional Love!

Also, the instant you see that the whole thing is you, all fear, all doubt, any lack of confidence, is GONE! 

(Illusion is required for fear.)

That you will die one day - GONE!

Being irritated by anyone - GONE!

That roller coaster of motivation, stress, meditation, repeat, repeat - GONE!

 

Edited July 22, 2017 by Nahm

[Joseph Maynor]

1 hour ago, Nahm said:

@Joseph Maynor definitions matter here.  

Awareness is awareness.  

Belief is belief.

belief is not awareness.

asking if something is the truth is like asking if you got hit by a bus.

You know when you get hit by a bus.

You know when you are the Truth.

Vision, hearing, relationship with your body, clarity, love, compassion, laughter - all go through the roof. As if you're aware of them for the first time. It is impossible to remember what it was like before. Every time you try to remember, you laugh!!!

like how you see a small child - they're innocent, and sweet, they mess up, but they don't know and it's adorable!

That is how awareness sees Jo! Unconditional Love!

Also, the instant you see that the whole thing is you, all fear, all doubt, any lack of confidence, is GONE! 

(Illusion is required for fear.)

That you will die one day - GONE!

Being irritated by anyone - GONE!

That roller coaster of motivation, stress, meditation, repeat, repeat - GONE!

 

So we cannot know for certain that reality is real then.  That would be a judgment.  All we have is the appearance.  Saying the appearances are real is going beyond appearance.  Here's an interesting one.  I am the Self.  Is this an appearance or a judgment?  If it's a mere appearance, how can we claim that we are the Self in a factual kind of way, like we are inclined to do.  I think the belief that I am the Self is the only case where the proof is provided, and it's not experience or reason.  The one undogmatic belief.  Even saying that appearances are real seems more dognatic than the belief that I am the Self.  I am the Self seems to be the only objective Truth.  Is this a dogmatic statement?  Direct consciousness is a way of knowing, as is experience and reasoning.  

Edited July 22, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Leo Gura]

@Joseph Maynor Everything you've ever encountered in your life from age 0 to now, was not absolute. It was all infinitely far from absolute. Which is why it's all disappeared into the past. Even your ideas of "reality" disappear as soon as you turn on the TV and stop thinking about them.

If something starts or stops, comes or goes, it is, by definition, not absolute.

[Joseph Maynor]

@Leo Gura The more I continue to play the debate game, the more I really resonate with this wise video of yours.  A great video.  Nothing can be known for certain.  "Skepticism leads to non-duality by refusing to take any ideological positions.  Total quietude of mind is the absolute truth."  "Stop holding positions.  The whole point of the ego is to latch onto positions.  Let them go.  The ego needs a position to be, to exist.  Don't fall into that trap."  "The true skeptic is not a debater, they are interested in the end of debate."  "Judgments and conclusions go beyond the appearances.  We don't want to kid ourselves that we know more than we do.  This is dogmatism."  "The true skeptic is not a debunker."  "True skepticism leads to tranquility of mind."  I need to embody this but without stopping Inquiry.  Inquiry needs to be confined to the Self though, as Ramana Masarshi said.  The problem is that we want to externalize Inquiry.  That's where we go astray.  We go from the mindset of offering a perspective to the mindset of offering the Truth.  That's the slight of hand.  Every perspective is just a perspective.  No perspective is the Truth.  We forget that all the time.  The ego is very sneaky and nefarious on this point.  As soon as we notice that we are telling (dogmatically asserting) the Truth (our truth) or setting the record straight, we should check ourselves.  I watched this video twice through tonight.  It's easy to hear this stuff, but much harder to embody it and to live it.

 

Edited July 22, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Leo Gura]

@Joseph Maynor Yup, that's the gist of the world's problem.

Questioning oneself is the hardest work on earth. Which is why people come up with every excuse and distraction imaginable not to do it.

The trick is to become more and more aware of how you trick yourself out of doing self-inquiry.

[Joseph Maynor]

57 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Joseph Maynor Yup, that's the gist of the world's problem.

It took me this long to figure this out!  You can hear this stuff, hear this stuff, hear this stuff.  And then, at the right time, it just clicks.  It's like -- oh yeah, what the hell am I doing?  Awareness killed off another stupidity.  It takes a while to navigate the maze though.  The irony is that you gotta do it, so I don't regret the path.  I pursued it fervently.  The best insights come from counter-intuitive moves.  

I paraphrased below more of your language from the video and added a couple of words in myself so that's why this stuff is not in quotes.

All ideologies except true skepticism make claims about what is good and bad, true and false.  This game becomes your downfall because it is a game you cannot win.  You will never be happy playing this game.  Your mind will be perturbed mentally because now you need to defend this stuff.

The true skeptic does not take positions on what is good, bad, true, and false.  This leaves them with a quiet, unperturbed mind, and from there they can achieve Eudaimonia.

Edited July 22, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Brivido]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Joseph Maynor Everything you've ever encountered in your life from age 0 to now, was not absolute. It was all infinitely far from absolute. Which is why it's all disappeared into the past. Even your ideas of "reality" disappear as soon as you turn on the TV and stop thinking about them.

If something starts or stops, comes or goes, it is, by definition, not absolute.

So what is the nature of the world around us? Am quite confused on this point, many teacher say that the world is the manifestation of God, then others say that the world has nothing to do with God, everybody seems to contradict each other on this point.

In my experience, I can sense that everything on the "screen" is moving and is not stable, at the same time am aware that there is something allowing the perception of the images on the screen. Although I have no idea of what this "something" is... 

[Nahm]

@Brivido it's you

[Joseph Maynor]

The notion of reality, that reality exists, that reality is real, is a paradigm-lock.  

 

[Shin]

Find out for yourself, you can ask how much question you want, it's not gonna solve or do anything.

@Joseph Maynor And you still keep asking, as if it would unlock some mystical insight that will make your realize your enlightenment.
At the beginning it can be useful, but from what I see you writting, you clearly don't need it anymore.

Edited July 22, 2017 by Shin

[Joseph Maynor]

1 hour ago, Shin said:

Find out for yourself, you can ask how much question you want, it's not gonna solve or do anything.

I agree with you in part.  It has been by asking questions that has raised my awareness the most though.  So, you gotta be careful with that kind of advice.  But I take it charitably and in good faith.  Enlightenment is not just the destination but the journey, and the journey by necessity is fraught with error.  It's like a child thinking it can skip adolescence and shoot straight to adulthood.  You gotta go through the process to become enlightened.  And that process should be messy.  If it is clean it is a weak enlightenment not a strong one.  You might not get the answer by questioning, but the questioning unsettles something else that leads to an epiphany.  So, whatever you do in service of becoming enlightened is ultimately beneficial over the long term, even if it is engaging in stupid things.  Stupid things cause smart things paradoxically.  And there isn't always a 1-to-1 connection between them.  It's like tripping and falling down a manhole and landing on a feather bed stuffed with money with angelic music playing in the background.  Who knew?  Who could have known?  So, beware of the rationalist paradigm kind of skewing this assumption that there has to be a 1-to-1 relationship between questions and answers.  Sometimes a dumb thing leads to a smart thing.  Be open to that.  What we are doing here is increasing awareness.  And it's by doing a lot of dumb things that increases awareness the most.  And everybody has to do this, even if it is annoying to those further up the chain.  Like listening to kids talk about basic math is almost intolerable to the calculus student.  The calculus student forgot where he came from.  He sees things myopically from his current perspective.  

Watch this excellent video on point:  It's one of my favorite Leo videos.

"Failure is a mechanism that feeds a lot of progress in your life, specifically it feeds understanding."

"Focusing on success to the exclusion of failure is backwards and not very realistic."

"Failures tell you with certainty what doesn't work."

"The failures you are taking along that route are actually generating a lot of your ultimate success."

 

Edited July 22, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Loreena]

7 hours ago, Brivido said:

So what is the nature of the world around us?

 

4 hours ago, Nahm said:

@Brivido it's you

The nature of the world around us is "You."

[Leo Gura]

10 hours ago, Brivido said:

So what is the nature of the world around us? Am quite confused on this point, many teacher say that the world is the manifestation of God, then others say that the world has nothing to do with God, everybody seems to contradict each other on this point.

It's both, depending on your level of consciousness.

The Divine Paradox is this:

God is in all things, and yet God is not any of those things. Atman = Brahman. Form and formlessness are one. The Absolute is the sum total of everything relative.

But practically, you need to learn to distinguish God (Nothingness, formlessness) from all the forms you see around you (Maya). Even though Maya and God are identical, a distinction can still be made between the Absolute and the Relative. Since you're already extremely familiar with the Relative, your work now is to connect with the Absolute. Once you accomplish that, then you can come back into the Relative to see that it's actually not separate from the Absolute.

It's sorta like separating an egg yoke from the white, and then merging them back together into one whole egg. You can't appreciate the wholeness of the egg until you've experienced the yoke and white separately.

[Principium Nexus]

How can you question if reality is real if you experiencing it now? Yes, the believes might be false depictions/illusions, but the totality of all those things is reality and that IS.

Edited July 22, 2017 by Principium Nexus

[Nahm]

@Principium Nexus

Principium Nexus is illusion  "experiencing". The practices increase awareness to the point of enlightenment. When that happens there's no more "you" "experiencing", You Are The Awareness of the dude who has the experiences.  Then, experience is to awareness like your vision is to your thinking. (all of which are part of the illusion)  hope that's helpful.  

[Principium Nexus]

@Nahm Thank you. But in my comment I ment it is real in the sense that it is happening, despite any labels, identification, etc. Whether those illusions of who I think I am are true don't really matter. Even thinking that they happen but they actually don't is a happening on its own haha. We are now.

[Nahm]

@Principium Nexus ??

[zazed]

On 22-7-2017 at 6:51 AM, Joseph Maynor said:

So we cannot know for certain that reality is real then.  That would be a judgment.  All we have is the appearance

What is reality from the human perspective? Is it not just the 5 senses plus thought. Sight, smell, touch, hearing, smelling. It all comes trough the body.
Something is aware of all of this. Consciousness is aware of this experience.  But this experience is certainly not absolute. Is it real, but only to this specific body.

Also, humanity is not special. The universe is very large, the earth is smaller than a microbe in the desert. Do we exist for a purpose, or is it just a random event? Some say the chances of a habitable world, with a moon, orbiting at the right distance around the sun, are so infinitely small, there must be a reason or creator.
I say, if those are the requirements for life to grow, the chance that intelligent life will experience those exact conditions is a 100%, because otherwise it wouldn't be alive to experience it.  Isn't it all just being, isn't being just rolling dice, for billions of years across vast distances. And yet, here we are, somehow.

Some say this universe is created by consciousness, and as there is awareness of it, more of it is created somehow? Like consciousness dreaming up the universe. I think that is possible, maybe. But does it matter? Is it important to know such things, will it give enlightenment really to know this?

It doesn't mean much either way, when all you can do is be. Isn't this all just creating duality, trying to use the human brain to understand what you are, when you already are what you are? You can struggle and fight and inquire into "what is" as a human-mind, or you can be what is.
Do you care about all the specific workings of your car and the chemistry of the concrete road you are driving on, when you are driving somewhere?

"Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."