Progress is like a YO YO

[LRyan]

I just wanted to see if anyone else is struggling with an up and down journey to their awareness/consciousness...self inquiry.  I have had very significant experiences that I believe were close to understanding what this thing called "life" is all about.  I have had at the most 3 weeks of unbelievable calm and bliss and being so grounded and unaffected by anything.  It was as if nothing was wrong or right it just was the way it was and I accepted it all with no inner conflict or struggle.  That happened in 2008 for me.

Since then, I recall a couple of other times where I didn't need any more answers...I wasn't seeking anything...I understood enough.  There was nothing left to learn or know and I felt at complete peace and I felt so different and I just expected to always be like this.  Watching the water droplets come out of the kitchen faucet.  Looking....really deeply looking at nature and appreciating a blade of green grass poking through an icy snowy patch or ground.  The different sounds of birds and dogs and footsteps.  It was as if I was in tune with every single thing around me and I could identify 5 6 or 8 sounds at once and they all seemed to fit together seamlessly....as if it was all in harmony, like pieces of a puzzle.   Then, somehow, i'm sucked back through a vortex and within a certain amount of time, almost asleep to everything I just experienced.

Why does this happen?  Even though I seem to forget, I also remember at some point and I come back again to what I know and believe but it's as if I am fighting a war to try to get back to the knowing that I have experienced.

This is so frustrating and when this happens, I feel like I keep failing myself.  Sometimes I can go weeks without realizing that I am living a waking dream and just acting out an old story line with the same old characters in the same old play and suffering through things I have already suffered through.  It's like, how can I not learn after what I have experienced.

Where is this battle coming from?  Can I just not stay status quo so to speak?  Why do I keep losing ground and then have to climb back up the mountain over and over again? 

[Saumaya]

Can you describe your self enquiry?

Edited March 1, 2018 by Saumaya

[LRyan]

Contemplation, study of teachings, meditation, watching plenty of videos, listening to speakers.  I haven't attended any retreats but I've been asking the hard questions about what is the meaning of life, why am I here, what is reality, where did we come from.....trying to find answers...looking with an open mind at a lot of material...coming to conclusions and trying to sort out what is real.

[Saumaya]

@LRyan Dont come to conclusions about existential questions. In your self enquiry , you have to ask what is one thing, that for sure you know is true.

Question every assumption of every belief you hold. It will eventually lead to the question of who am I. Question everything about yourself. How have you confirmed that there is such thing as you that exists.

[Leo Gura]

@LRyan Because enlightenment alone is not enough. Enlightenment doesn't actually transform your old self very much. What's necessary in addition to enlightenment is a complete consciousness of all the habits, emotions, lies, manipulations,  and agendas of the self. That's where the bulk of the work lies. The self is a stubborn bastard that refuses to change because its job is to stay the self.

The self must be gradually aligned with the Absolute through thousands of hours of consciousness work -- not merely more meditation or self-inquiry. This involves questioning all your motivations, fears, desires, emotional triggers, clearing your chakras, etc, etc.

One enlightenment experience is NOT going to radically transform the self the way most people hope.

You keep losing ground because, despite your glimpses and insights, you are still fundamentally deeply unconscious. That's what needs to be worked on. You need to bring the Absolute into your mundane life.

Forgetfulness is a hallmark of this whole path. That's why in Islam they pray 5 times a day: to remind themselves to wake up. (And it still largely doesn't work). This shows you just how strong of a force the self is.

[Faceless]

It seems rather reasonable that progresss and liberation don’t go together. 

Liberation is the freedom from the psychological time ‘becoming’ 

The cultivation of time only leads to further time and compulsions to become. 

Liberation is seeing that time ‘psychological progress’ only leads to contradiction, confusion, and further conflict. 

Again ‘the self’ feeds/thrives off the desire and the intention to cultivate and progress through the movement of psychological time. 

When one depends on time to bring about a revolution of the psyche one can spend a lifetime to become free from the self. 

This doesn’t have to be though. When one sees that depending on time is a type of procrastination and only leads to a prepetual movement in time then that seeing becomes  right action in ending that grueling, and conflicting pattern of agonizing strife. 

This is why it is said that liberation could take either a day or a lifetime. This is true. It’s all about the approach.  

But it does take all ones energy. This is what I think Leo is trying to convey. It’s much more that an experience. And it’s about how liberation transforms ones daily conduct.?

 

Edited March 1, 2018 by Faceless

[LRyan]

@Leo Gura Hmmm.  Thanks for cutting to the chase....I can see what you are saying and I am in agreement with it.  The issue seems to be that it was my assumption that if I understood enlightenment the way it is described by many teachers, it appears as if it IS the catalyst to throw someone into the bliss and peace of knowing that all is one and everything is infinite and that when you literally experience this as close as we can get in human form to knowing the truth, the self as we have known it and all of its silly quirks and issues and petty unimportant mundane problems would drop away and that things would be without conflict because of the enlightenment experience and knowing the infinite nature of existence.  How stupid and unrealistic this seems to be. 

This was my problem and why I felt so neurotic after experiencing that peace because I wasn't able to walk around with a smile nodding at everyone and agreeing with everything.  My expectations were wrong.  I fell into a simplistic view that enlightenment or the glimpse of it meant the end of the suffering fool living out a dream in physical form.

I finally feel that there is something that I can work with here.  The truth shall set you free ....but we are still living with a self that requires tending to.  We still have to live within certain boundaries to be a part of society so we can function in this form.  It makes sense that it would not be an instant fix but rather something that is so eye opening and so conscious that we could shift our thinking and habits to align with what we have realized.

I don't have the most analytical mind and I don't conceptualize things as well as others but is this what you mean?  If I am on the right track, then I can actually work towards trying to align my self with what I know to be truth and try to live as consciously as I can.  Emotional triggers is the biggest issue for me and throws me back into insanity.

I catch myself in unconsciousness countless times per day.  I have woken up enough to see the insanity going on in my head and around me so I am able to do that, but I am still unconscious far too much for my liking.

Yes the self is one stubborn bastard! lol!

 

Edited March 1, 2018 by LRyan

[LRyan]

@Faceless   I feel like people around me are evolving and I am finally getting the information that I need.  Reinforcement that having a glimpse or an experience of enlightenment is not the end but rather the beginning?  Is this what you are getting at?

I do understand that Psychological time is a man made idea so we can reference certain points of a day.  Even the term day is made up and doesn't exist either.  I get what you mean that saying, in time...I will understand and "get there".  There is no where to get and there is no such thing as the past or the future everything happens right now in this second ...then it's gone, then again, then it's gone...I get that for sure.

I like what you said about liberation can take a day or a lifetime...could even take a second.  

I truly can understand now that my expectation of and enlightened experience does not change the habits and ways of the self without further effort to integrate the two.  But my question is...can they be successfully integrated??  Some spiritual teachers seem to have sort of done it but I'm not sure.  Moojoi seems to have, Eckhart Tolle and Rupert Spira and a few others maybe but it seems to elude most.  Hmm.  Thanks for the input! Its great to have something for my self to work on

 

 

[Leo Gura]

@LRyan Well, for example, what transforms a person such as an advanced yogi or Zen master isn't just his enlightenment, but his 20 years of rigorous daily practice which lead to the enlightenment. And even then, many yogis and Zen masters are incomplete in their realization and embodiment.

It's very rare that one becomes as enlightened as Jesus or the Buddha. And even rarer that it happens in one shot.

Whatever glimpses you've had, they were probably not that deep.

The trick is that even a small glimpse will feel mindblowing and deep, which tends to obscure that fact that it's only the tip of the iceberg.

[Timotheus]

@LRyan I've had glimpses of no self. I cried my eyes out, felt a gratitude I never felt before, felt love for the first time. It felt like it was worth all the suffering in my life ( wasn't that little). Yet, daily I have thoughts on taking revenge on people, imagining some violent, bloody actions, torturing people, enjoying my hatred, thinking about destroying people's lifes etc. I can if I want emotionally disconnect from anyone I want. That's just some examples, but ime all of this wears off over time, there is no more need for this shit, because more and more you can just have peace NOW, what more would you want? I call it wear off, other people call it integration or dealing with the unconscious.

[LRyan]

@Saumaya I have questioned until I break all questions down to the one question..who am I?

My belief is that I am soul energy expressed in a human form in this dimension.  I believe that I am a piece of God or a piece of the Universe, whatever anyone wants to call it...Source Energy.  I also believe that we are all one, but on this plane, we are expressed to look like individual people in a human form.  I don't believe i was born in the sense people think of birth and I don't believe I will die.  I believe it can be summed up that I am purely a part of the universe expressed as slow moving energy that is currently embodied as a human being.

Everything is about transformation, being birthed into this human life, dying from this human form.  Its just simply a transformation back into universal energy, source energy or God in it's infinite formlessness.

This is my ultimate belief.....but I am  open obviously to other views or ideas as not many humans that have ever lived as one have had 100% knowing to the core of their being, the answers they were seeking..

Edited March 1, 2018 by LRyan

[LRyan]

@Leo Gura

Yes, the small glimpse that I felt and had were so mind blowing it was enough to change my mind and everything I know as a human being for as long as I will walk this earth.  I knew right then that all my previous ideas about what I was were wrong and I had to keep looking for the real meaning.

At one point I felt so in tune with everything around me, I felt like I couldn't live as a flesh and blood human anymore because I knew that everything that I was doing, going through all the motions with people and a job etc.  were just inauthentic.  I realized that I would feel like an actor with people because I feel we are all actors.  We are not who we are but the paradox is that we CAN'T be what we are on this earth can we?  It's quite literally impossible.  It felt like all conversations I had with anyone were completely useless and had no meaning and at first it felt weird to very very difficult to carry on a conversation with anyone.  BUT I felt such peace, no conflict there were no problems nothing.  

Have no idea if this is related but when this happened to me a year and a half ago, it was the biggest full moon I ever saw.  It felt so large and close to me it was very strange.  

I was not on any kind of substance when this happened.  It was like an instant realization though that crashed in on my mind.

It felt like I needed to go and be alone ....forever after I had this realization.  But again, since we can't do that, I got sucked back into the play, the game this thing called life!

[Nahm]

16 hours ago, LRyan said:

it's as if I am fighting a war to try to get back to the knowing that I have experienced.

 

It might be helpful to look at this a different way. The peace, calm, love, bliss that you want to “get back to”, has been there all along. It never leaves and returns. It is all things, it is you. The shiny things and dilemmas of the illusion can so easily trigger our thinking about it. Then it’s even easier to unconsciously identify or form a preference, a thought. I am finding deeper embodiment by proactively surrundering preferences. Food for example. I eat what is best for the body. I honestly lost preference for taste a while back. Not that I don’t appreciate taste, but “consciousness” as in beingness,  is all, taste is illusion. So I surrendered it. Fitness is the same. I surrendered my preference and do what is best for the body. Relationships are the same. There is an epiphany of no self, and there is a ‘life’ of selflessness, and no, or as little as possible, preference relative to “my” body mind being the center or point of the relativity. I am finding this to be embodiment, and it is blissful. Ironically, the relativity of all ‘things around the body mind’ is revealed, as in a trip peak.

I also have found that all is forgotten during a night’s sleep. When I wake up, I sit and do nothing. Staying in the all is forgotten. No talking, no watching anything, no thoughts. Within just a few minutes the bliss fills the body mind, as it is empty, void of subtle conditions. The nature of unconditional love is unconditional. It is unconditional to the bod mind, so only in complete surrender is it present. So essentially, try, upon waking everyday, complete surrender, complete body and mind surrender, before any activity at all, even observing. When there are no conditions of the person body mind, then their is only unconditional love. 

To your previous post, consider there is no soul, no human, no dimensions, no God, no universe. Nothing. It’s hard to communicate the full extent of nothing in body mind, and therefore no preferences or concept of these things, but that is when what is unconditional can be. It is always being, it’s the ‘anything added’ that get’s our attention. 

[LRyan]

@Timotheus

Its such a deep crazy realization I know.  I think the mind is insane and we all have dark thoughts, look what we are capable of really....anything. 

Here is a quote I love:

 

                                                             "divine guidance often comes when the horizon is the blackest"

                                                                                                                                                      Gandhi

 

 

This I believe wholeheartedly.

 

 

[Saumaya]

24 minutes ago, LRyan said:

My belief is that I am soul energy expressed in a human form in this dimension.  I believe that I am a piece of God or a piece of the Universe, whatever anyone wants to call it...Source Energy.  I also believe that we are all one, but on this plane, we are expressed to look like individual people in a human form.  I don't believe i was born in the sense people think of birth and I don't believe I will die.  I believe it can be summed up that I am purely a part of the universe expressed as slow moving energy that is currently embodied as a human being.

Everything is about transformation, being birthed into this human life, dying from this human form.  Its just simply a transformation back into universal energy, source energy or God in it's infinite formlessness.

 

Sounds like you got work to do. You gotta question every assumption of every belief.

[LRyan]

@Nahm Yes, thanks for catching that unconscious thought that I need to "get Back"! lol.  There is no back and forward, of course there isn't.

I really get what you are saying about surrendering preferences and I applaud you for that.  It shows such presence to realize that the body needs simple things to be in optimum shape, food, real food not chemical variations of food and exercise.  You have worked very hard obviously to get to that point.  I hadn't really thought of doing that for myself but I'm interested in the idea.  I admire your ability to also take this to a relationship level.  I'm not there yet but I do see what I need to work on.. Takes surrendering to do so, yes.

That is such a great idea to make a morning ritual of not clogging the mind with anything immediately upon waking up.  I do believe we have a clean slate upon waking and that I something I will put into practice to center myself for the day and perhaps that will bring about more embodiment of how I want to exist in a peaceful state ....thanks for that! 

It's always the triggers that come crashing in, pulling you back into unconsciousness.  For me it's the phone....reminding me that everyone in my family needs my attention.  I have lived with a people pleasing personality for all of my life so learning to put myself first has been my greatest challenge.  If I am to move forward with this work and inquiry, I will have to shut down the part that feels the need to help everyone.

Edited March 1, 2018 by LRyan

[LRyan]

@Saumaya Have you gone through this questioning of your assumptions and beliefs?  I'm wondering how you go beyond what you already thought you have gone beyond?  I know the layers are deep.  I might need to take a more directed approach to go further.  I'm not sure how to delve deeper without possible attending a retreat or secluding myself from life for a period of time.  

When I say source energy or God or Universal Energy, I don't mean that I am talking about any thing or religious notion.  I'm actually talking about no thing..... Nothingness, Maybe energy isn't the word I mean.......when I say a piece of the universe, i don't mean that it is separate.  I might not be able to express it in words what I mean.  

Edited March 1, 2018 by LRyan

[Nahm]

@LRyan You’re really kind, thanks. I also think, in this do nothing upon waking, that a dream from the night reveals it is showing you what you’ve been ‘keeping on your mind’, after some time, you won’t dream anymore / living in the embodiment, the mind is not trying to reconcile two states, just resting in one. You’re definitly on the right track, questioning all this, honestly communicating. Very happy for you. I know you’ll be where you want to be, because I see your approach. ❤️

[LRyan]

@Nahm   Awe thanks for the support!  It is so helpful when I hear such good tips to help me to get to where I want to be!  And, I'm looking for things that I can implement practically and immediately so I am making a commitment to being void of stimulation upon waking.  I really think that will help because usually my mind starts running in loops before I'm even out of bed.  A conscious effort is needed here!   I'm a work in progress at the moment which is fine.  Everything is fine actually.................Except I can't figure out how to post a picture for my avatar and I would like to have an inspirational quote under my posts!! lol!

[dorg]

13 hours ago, LRyan said:

I catch myself in unconsciousness countless times per day.  I have woken up enough to see the insanity going on in my head and around me so I am able to do that, but I am still unconscious far too much for my liking.

It is not sufficient to just catch yourself moving into unconsciousness. You need to notice the thought pattern, the belief, that drives each of these movements.

Notice that you (awareness) is not unconscious, the thought pattern, what you think you are, that is unconscious.

 

Edited March 1, 2018 by dorg