Two Questions to ask

[Forestluv]

@Thanatos13 

I spent 25 years trying to figure it out. Meditation, retreats, dharma talks, the sangha, hundreds of books, thousands of hours on personal development and with self help groups, traveling to 20 foreign countries. And on and on. . .  I know what a spinning mind is like. 

And my mind was expanded more in one four hour period than those 25 yrs. combined.

All this intellectual sparing is great. Yet it aint IT. You won’t find IT through your intellect.

Why not  try and eliminate your self and see what arises?

[thehero]

this forum tries to stay away from dogma as much as humanly possible, possibly more than any other community on the internet

 

given that, it would be beneficial if you took some time to question your beliefs and try to understand the non-duality in an honest manner 

 

your epistemology could use some refining, which is something you can grasp fairly shortly. I would check out leo's videos on radical openmindedness, mechanism of belief, and default positions. once these concepts jive in your mind, you will approach this discussion differently. 

 

good luck 

[Faceless]

49 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

@Thanatos13 

I spent 25 years trying to figure it out. Meditation, retreats, dharma talks, the sangha, hundreds of books, thousands of hours on personal development and with self help groups, traveling to 20 foreign countries. And on and on. . .  I know what a spinning mind is like. 

And my mind was expanded more in one four hour period than those 25 yrs. combined.

All this intellectual sparing is great. Yet it aint IT. You won’t find IT through your intellect.

Why not  try and eliminate your self and see what arises?

Freedom from the known is essential. And time ‘movement of intellect’ leads only to further finite movements of time and will always be extremely partial and limited and will never be able to capture the whole. 

[Thanatos13]

1 hour ago, thehero said:

this forum tries to stay away from dogma as much as humanly possible, possibly more than any other community on the internet

 

given that, it would be beneficial if you took some time to question your beliefs and try to understand the non-duality in an honest manner 

 

your epistemology could use some refining, which is something you can grasp fairly shortly. I would check out leo's videos on radical openmindedness, mechanism of belief, and default positions. once these concepts jive in your mind, you will approach this discussion differently. 

 

good luck 

There are a great many things wrong with his view on epistemology and open mindedness. I know because I’ve seen the videos. 

 

2 hours ago, Serotoninluv said:

@Thanatos13 

I spent 25 years trying to figure it out. Meditation, retreats, dharma talks, the sangha, hundreds of books, thousands of hours on personal development and with self help groups, traveling to 20 foreign countries. And on and on. . .  I know what a spinning mind is like. 

And my mind was expanded more in one four hour period than those 25 yrs. combined.

All this intellectual sparing is great. Yet it aint IT. You won’t find IT through your intellect.

Why not  try and eliminate your self and see what arises?

Somehow I doubt that. 

The problem with you and everyone else here is that you assume there is an IT. There isn’t. IT is simply what anyone wants it to be. I would go on to say that your retreats, meditation, and such are a waste of time. But that’s just me. People think the answer is in isolation but that seems like folly to me. 

You seem rather obsessed with elimination of self as the answer, yet times have shown that the self is a thing (just not what we originally thought). There isn’t a real way to tell if you actually got rid of the self, since accounts vary as to what that feels like and there isn’t a way to prove it beyond sensory data (which is the same criticism levied against a sense of self). 

I tried no self one time. All that happened was me being mostly like a rock, null to just about anything. But it didn’t tell me anything or show any grand truth. All it showed is that what is believed is what your mind makes. I know this based on previous experience, I believed many things and they became my reality until no longer. The same happened with no self. It did not have the effect that others said it would, and my “ego” didn’t fight it. 

I doubt you have read thousands of books because if you did you likely wouldn’t be so certain of anything, even no self. Leo’s library is just self help books which don’t amount to much. Even terms like “mind expanding” are nonsense. 

They say fools are certain and the wise are full of doubt. All my years of testing, reading, and searching just amount to little more than “I don’t know for sure”. That’s why I’ve decided to stick with science. It doesn’t claim to have a perfect answer, and knows how flawed human perception and reason can be. They give a best guess and that works for me.

Personally I think people looking for “it” are wasting their time. They will only ever get a relative version of “it” or what they believe it to be. But humans have been wrong before many times and that’s why one can’t hold such things too tightly. 

You say IT can’t be found through intellect yet how do you know? What if someone did find it that way? You merely parrot what mystics say before.

[Thanatos13]

But again, we can just agree to disagree. Not to mention that this is way off topic.

[thehero]

2 hours ago, Thanatos13 said:

wrong with his view on epistemology and open mindedness

which part?

please be very clear, precise and non-dodgy 

 

Edited April 10, 2018 by thehero

[Ether]

@Thanatos13 Bruh

[SOUL]

@Thanatos13  For my own experience any inner work is for a sense of well being, for fulfillment and to enjoy life.

All emotional impulses exist in us without any dualistic mindset that someone might have so love, compassion, joy and such still can be experienced without the duality perspective.

Edited April 10, 2018 by SOUL