Either you are enlightened or not enlightened

[Nahm]

@Deep awww Deep!! Lol.  Noooooooo

❤️

[Nahm]

@Joseph Maynor Dang it.   Enlightenment is binary, and ultimately it’s not. It’s like saying that you were born is binary. Awareness in incremental. Ego dismantle is incremental too. It’s a classic case of both and neither. Lol.  (IMO)

Bad habits, shit beliefs, idiotic Ego attachments, stupid fears and superstitions, backward culture — all these take the rest of your life to root out and let go.

imo, the bad habits don’t go, but are more easily changed...all the rest of that does go though. In one, binary, experience. 

[Shanmugam]

16 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

It’s a paradox:

1.  Awakening has no levels.  Reality never changed, so there is no change per say.

But

2.  Dismantling the Ego has levels.  Bad habits, shit beliefs, idiotic Ego attachments, stupid fears and superstitions, backward culture, abusive childhood — all these take the rest of your life to root out and let go.  So, detaching from Ego has levels even after Awakening.  Awakening is just the beginning.

 

1. Truth has no levels. Truth/Reality is all there is. There is no disagreement here

2. This is where there is a problem. I will elaborate a little bit here...

a) Each person's mind has a hard nut to crack. It is like an outer layer. (Bad habits, shit beliefs, idiotic Ego attachments, stupid fears and superstitions, backward culture, abusive childhood, religious conditioning etc )...

b) The real glimpse of enlightenment - some people may say that they are beginning to awaken here..

c)  Actual enlightenment - (I am not going to define it this time)  you cannot bypass this... 

d) Lifelong deepening of enlightenment - this happens automatically for the rest of your life. 

 

Edited February 8, 2018 by Shanmugam

[Shanmugam]

Sometimes I wonder whether a lot of people in this forum are using the word 'enlightenment' itself in a different meaning.. 

Enlightenment is not - becoming more intelligent, wise, knowing a lot of information about everything, telepathy, telekinesis, psychology, trying to find the secrets behind the origin of the universe etc, UFO's,...

I suspect if there has been a huge misunderstanding.. 

I will give you some clues:   Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj

One more clue:  Meditation

 

 

Edited February 8, 2018 by Shanmugam

[Faceless]

26 minutes ago, Nahm said:

@Faceless Not trying to push ya, I hear you.

I do want to clarify though, my intention was not a set up so to speak, asking for anyone to state wether or not they are enlightened. I get that. I was hoping we could share our actual enlightenment experience with each other. I’m more interested in that, then who can win the word battle. I’m probably the odd man out in that way right now though. 

If a mind has no conflict, no sense of striving, moving and achieving, do you think one would seek various experiences at all?

If you know the self/thought, you would see the truth that searching for that “great experience” is an expression of the self searching for gratification, pleasure, and fulfillment, which is therefore a thought induced projection that brings one a sense of self affirming satisfaction and psychological security. 

It’s essential that one must understand this question of psychological time, the constant becoming, or not becoming. When that becoming is rooted in the mind it conditions all your thinking. And when the mind is full of its conditioning that mind is never free. 

So you asked me to share an experience but when there is this action of total perception/insight into thought/the self, there ceases to be a desire for various experiences at all. And when there is not a desire for experiences, experiences seem to cease all together. Because any experience is of thought, memory, knowledge, and experience...And when a mind negates the limited and conditioned nature of thought, ‘consciousness’ then becomes a total freedom from all that thought has put together.

Freedom from the self is freedom from the illusion of psychological time, and freedom from time ‘becoming’ implies freedom from experiences. Because experience implies an experiencer. If the experiencer ceases all that is left is observation. 

 

This is most likely not what you wanted but it’s the way I like to do things. I don’t like to put images into people’s minds because those images will inevitably become projections of volition ‘the self’ to be attained,  therefore leading to and perpetuating another’s illusion and self deception. 

I hope you appreciate what I have offered though friend.??

 

[Joseph Maynor]

1 hour ago, Nahm said:

@SOUL @Faceless @Shanmugam  Seems like someone is stating they don’t want help, and someone is trying to help none the less. That semantic discourse, imo, is what’s been at play for the majority of this thread. Any chance you guys would share your personal story of your actual experience of enlightenment? Not so much what it’s like now, or the path, but the experience itself, when it ‘happened’? I think that would allow a much deeper understanding of where each other are coming from. The meanings behind the words would come out. Otherwise, it’s kind of a circle jerk. Not that there’s anything wrong with a circle jerk. Lol I know what is meant by the binary moment, there’s no question about God, the universe, my life, etc after that moment. But most people haven’t had that experience. So there’s a lot of back and forth with out every simply stating what it is we are talking about. Or tell me to piss off, too, that’s cool also. 

People get too caught up in theory. It’s a huge trap. A bunch of Philosophers opining about Enlightenment.

[SOUL]

1 hour ago, Shanmugam said:

I know what enlightenment is.. And it is binary.

It is binary because you make it that way. This has been what I have been explaining again and again, you belie... er.... "know" is it binary so it is binary for you in your experience. Not me... not anyone else, for you. If someone else, anyone else belie... er "knows" it for themselves then it is for them in their experience but not for me in mine or anyone else who doesn't have that experience.

Quote

Enlightenment is the disappearance of duality. There may be temporary non-dual glimpses or experiences. But that is not enlightenment. Enlightenment is breaking the duality forever. So, either duality is there or not there. There cannot be a partial duality.

So if you are still teaching "binary enlightenment", and binary is duality, I have to ask......are you teaching this "enlightenment" teaching from separation? According to your own words if you have the experience of enlightenment that duality is broken forever. So you are still teaching a duality/binary enlightenment..... not my words... your words.... not my belief, it's yours.... not my experience, yours... I don't "know" it, you do.

I'm not saying you are "wrong", I'm saying you are "right" for your own experience since you create it that way. It's not really there, it's an illusion, but as you said in "enlightenment is breaking the duality forever" and that's because it wasn't ever to begin with.

[Shanmugam]

1 minute ago, SOUL said:

It is binary because you make it that way. This has been what I have been explaining again and again, you belie... er.... "know" is it binary so it is binary for you in your experience. Not me... not anyone else, for you. If someone else, anyone else belie... er "knows" it for themselves then it is for them in their experience but not for me in mine or anyone else who doesn't have that experience.

2

 oh my God!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't know what to say...

I should have first defined the words 'binary', 'duality', 'experience'....  

Quote

So if you are still teaching "binary enlightenment", and binary is duality, I have to ask......are you teaching this "enlightenment" teaching from separation? 

No!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There has been a Great misunderstanding...

@SOUL thank you for your time.. Have a great day!  

 

[Nahm]

@Joseph Maynor I was asking about your experience, not theory. Kinda opposites.

[Joseph Maynor]

3 minutes ago, Nahm said:

@Joseph Maynor I was asking about your experience, not theory. Kinda opposites.

I was agreeing with you. 

[Shanmugam]

@Nahm You have my book right? There is a whole chapter which is about my spiritual journey...  . 

[Nahm]

@Shanmugam The curiosity is killing me. Why is it that you don’t just explain the experience? Wouldn’t that be the most efficient way to communicate the binary factor? As in, once you see this, well, then you’ve seen it, so, it’s pretty black and white. Are you like maintains the mystery for him or somethings? lol. It’s like you’ll say anything but that. I love you’re writing, and where you’re coming from, I don’t think you’ll take this as offensive or anything, just crazy curious. 

[Nahm]

@Joseph Maynor soooo...not into sharing experiences either? Is this like, a regional thing or something? Maybe I live where people do this? Lol 

[Faceless]

lol Does anyone get the significance of freedom from experience here ??‍♂️

This is a simple example of projecting and chasing that projection. How does one know what they are chasing if they don’t know what it is that they are chasing?? U can only experience something that you know or have known.  

If one projects and idea and seeks to make that idea a reality then that idea becomes a reality. 

All current experiences are the product of memory, knowledge, experience. So what ever experience u have now implies that you already have had it before. Therefore nothing new. 

Is this clear??? 

Maybe it’s to simple lol 

 

Edited February 9, 2018 by Faceless

[Nahm]

@Shanmugam it’s fine man. Thank you. Obviously this a me thing I don’t get yet. No worries. I got 2 in the queue then yours, and I am very much looking forward to reading it. 

[Nahm]

@Faceless That’s an easy one, both. You can be completely free. You can share your experiences with others.  I am alone in crazyville right now. ??

Sometimes my wife says I’m open and direct, and people aren’t, and they get uncomfortable. That might be this. I do apologize if I was too forward or anything. I love you guys and I love the convo’s we get into. 

[Faceless]

@Nahm

it is clear though?

do you see the significance?

do you see the deceptive nature of that “great experience” being independent of thought? 

Edited February 9, 2018 by Faceless

[SOUL]

@Shanmugam Whatever you 'say' brother, haha

[Nahm]

@Faceless Uh...since you’re asking, yes, it seems like a smokescreen. Like I’m just asking, what was your experience with green like? The moment you saw green. And you’re talking about a whole different thing, anything but green. But again, clearly you’re not into sharing your experience, I get it. Sorry. Maybe it’s really personal to you, and I stand to be more sensitive to that, and to me it’s something that can easily be talked about, like anything else. I expand a lot from being very open. Different strokes for different folks. (Dropped a “folks” in there, @Joseph Maynor, I love when you say “folks” ❤️)

[Faceless]

@Nahm??‍♂️Ok