I am enlightened. Sincere seekers: ask me anything

[Pouya]

@winterknight

There was and there is not me inside that experiences the outside.

Now for me the inside is gone and only outside remains. I am not a perciever inside a body anymore. It's like everything just is without a me looking at it.

Now, is "my mind" an idea just like "me"?

[graded24]

37 minutes ago, winterknight said:

3. Yes. Whatever you are doing, wherever you are, you can engage in Ramana Maharshi's self-inquiry. It may take a little bit of practice at first, but you will quickly get the hang of it. You will do no worse than you otherwise would have done. 

Thank you for answering questions with patience. Here comes the most practical most relevant question for me at the moment. It might be too personal for you to relate or answer but i am gonna try anyway as i am desperate. 

I am 30, and have been an overambitious, overachiever but also a seeker at heart all my life. Since I study science, I had a passive assumption that success career and 'understanding reality' would be one and the same for me. But of course being exposed to Nonduality two years ago, that assumption looks clearly wrong and a trick of the ego. 

There have been 3 components of motivations so far, 1- Egoic, proving i am better than everyone, 2- Understanding Truth, which seemed to align with my work until recently 3- Financial/social survival.

As you can guess, Nonduality has clearly undermined all these three motivations. So I find myself simply not working and expending most of my time on Nondual teachings. The love for truth that fueled my professional work all these years have now totally shifted onto spirituality, leaving very little motivation and indeed time for the professional science work.  This is clearly not sustainable for many reasons but even the fear of future problems get set aside as mere 'egoic thoughts'. 
What would you suggest for someone like me? It is not enough to know that self-inquiry can be done with worldly work, because if there is not enough motivation to work daily, one simply doesnt work. How do I work without making Nonduality an excuse to not work? Ego can appropriate nonduality at times and use it as a 'loser's excuse'.  

the ideal scenario would be if i can continue both in parallel and complimentary way. But that seems like a pipe dream so far. If the first thought in the morning is about Nonduality my whole day goes into it. 
Thanks. 

Edited November 12, 2018 by graded24

[RyanEllis]

@RichardY Perfectly said?

[FoxFoxFox]

@winterknight

Hey. I am also enlightened. I have an observation and then a question: I find that for a lot of people, the biggest obstacle against self-realization (merging with consciousness or awareness, what have you) is that they cannot come to grips with accepting that the brain is not the source of consciousnesses. Do you have anything to tell these people that would convince them? 

Edited November 12, 2018 by FoxFoxFox

[winterknight]

34 minutes ago, i am I AM said:

@winterknight So pick whatever one believes seems preferable, et al.?

Sorry but that's what I got from your symbols, lol.

It's not really about what's preferable but about who's talking with what level of understanding, in what context, and for what purpose. Ultimate truth is beyond symbols and contexts, so all the words about it are distortions of one kind or another.

26 minutes ago, Pouya said:

@winterknight

There was and there is not me inside that experiences the outside.

Now for me the inside is gone and only outside remains. I am not a perciever inside a body anymore. It's like everything just is without a me looking at it.

Now, is "my mind" an idea just like "me"?

If I understand you correctly, yes. But you do say "Now for me the inside is gone..." Who is that "me" that is in that statement "for me"?

25 minutes ago, graded24 said:

Thank you for answering questions with patience. Here comes the most practical most relevant question for me at the moment. It might be too personal for you to relate or answer but i am gonna try anyway as i am desperate. 

I am 30, and have been an overambitious, overachiever but also a seeker at heart all my life. Since I study science, I had a passive assumption that success career and 'understanding reality' would be one and the same for me. But of course being exposed to Nonduality two years ago, that assumption looks clearly wrong and a trick of the ego. 

There have been 3 components of motivations so far, 1- Egoic, proving i am better than everyone, 2- Understanding Truth, which seemed to align with my work until recently 3- Financial/social survival.

As you can guess, Nonduality has clearly undermined all these three motivations. So I find myself simply not working and expending most of my time on Nondual teachings. The love for truth that fueled my professional work all these years have now totally shifted onto spirituality, leaving very little motivation and indeed time for the professional science work.  This is clearly not sustainable for many reasons but even the fear of future problems get set aside as mere 'egoic thoughts'. 
What would you suggest for someone like me? It is not enough to know that self-inquiry can be done with worldly work, because if there is not enough motivation to work daily, one simply doesnt work. How do I work without making Nonduality an excuse to not work? Ego can appropriate nonduality at times and use it as a 'loser's excuse'. 
Thanks. 

Well said. A very relatable situation. You are probably going to have to acknowledge that you don't want what you "should" want. You think you "should" want career success. You think you "should" want financial security.

These shoulds are killing you. The shoulds are just thoughts, patterns that you have obtained from family and society, when it is your emotions that control the ballgame. Time to align yourself with what you actually want -- what your emotions are telling you -- and see if you can come up with a solution that satisfies them.

As you say, "if there is not enough motivation to work... one simply doesn't work." Yes. This is the fact. There is no getting around it. No use trying to use "willpower" to overcome it.

Of course, perhaps part of you is afraid about money and career, and part of that may also be genuine emotion... if so, those desires have to be taken into account too. But you have overemphasized them at the expense of all other emotions, and that's why you are facing a problem. Probably you actually care much less about these things than you tell yourself. Maybe you would be content with a much lower amount of money and career success.

The "loser's excuse" bit is the problem -- it is a judgmental self-condemnation that is blocking out what you actually feel. But perhaps it is a deeply-embedded habit. No easy way to get rid of that sense. Condemning yourself for having that feeling would itself be playing into its hands.

So how do you reconcile all these? There is no cookie cutter solution. The main key is simply acknowledging and discovering what it is you actually want, without judgment or condemnation. That is the starting place. You cannot choose what you want, but you can open your eyes to it. That itself is a discovery process. Try to think about alternatives that match up to what you actually want... when you imagine them, how do you feel? If you try them out, how do you feel? That's how you discover more clearly what will work with your internal psychology. 

You say that not putting in your work in your field is "clearly not sustainable," but is that really true? Perhaps you need to find a less-demanding job, perhaps one out of science. Maybe that's really what you want to do but are afraid of admitting to yourself: that you don't care about science anymore. 

Basically, you have to get in touch with your emotions. That's also why I so highly recommend psychoanalytic/psychodynamic therapy for seekers. 

Oh, and use this entire situation as a springboard to the spiritual. Do Ramana Maharshi's self-inquiry continuously as you face and deal with these problems.

One day, you will be ready to surrender, and allow these problems to solve themselves. Until then, consider these recommendations.

Edited November 12, 2018 by winterknight

[winterknight]

13 minutes ago, FoxFoxFox said:

@winterknight

Hey. I am also enlightened. I have an observation and then a question: I find that for a lot of people, the biggest obstacle against self-realization (merging with consciousness or awareness, what have you) is that they cannot come to grips with accepting that the brain is not the source of consciousnesses. Do you have anything to tell these people that would convince them? 

It is hard. Some people will never be convinced, but some people want to be convinced but just haven't been yet. This second group has at least some possibility.

The basic argument that kind of works is this. The idea that the brain generates consciousness is materialism: everything comes from matter. Matter is that which can be observed by everyone equally. In theory, all humans, with the right instruments, should have access to it. That's the whole beauty and point of science -- it is publicly observable.

But in fact, you can never know what someone else's experience is really like. You can never know, for example, whether their color blue is really like your color blue. Even if a computer monitor printed out the color of what they saw when they looked at a clear sky, you could actually know it. Why is that? Because it would be you looking at the monitor. Maybe they would see something different.  

So if other people's experience is something that you can never actually directly access, then it is not publicly accessible. If it is not publicly accessible, then it is not scientific. If it is not scientific, then the brain cannot account for it. So each person's experience cannot be accounted for in the brain. Therefore the brain does not generate consciousness.

Whew. Oversimplified, but that's the argument in a nutshell. Look up the hard problem of consciousness, spectrum inversion, and the zombie problem if you want more serious philosophy on these points. But they get quite complex. 

[graded24]

14 minutes ago, winterknight said:

Well said. A very relatable situation. You are probably going to have to acknowledge that you don't want what you "should" want. You think you "should" want career success. You think you "should" want financial security.

These shoulds are killing you. The shoulds are just thoughts, patterns that you have obtained from family and society, when it is your emotions that control the ballgame. Time to align yourself with what you actually want -- what your emotions are telling you -- and see if you can come up with a solution that satisfies them.

As you say, "if there is not enough motivation to work... one simply doesn't work." Yes. This is the fact. There is no getting around it. No use trying to use "willpower" to overcome it.

Of course, perhaps part of you is afraid about money and career, and part of that may also be genuine emotion... if so, those desires have to be taken into account too. But you have overemphasized them at the expense of all other emotions, and that's why you are facing a problem. Probably you actually care much less about these things than you tell yourself. Maybe you would be content with a much lower amount of money and career success.

The "loser's excuse" bit is the problem -- it is a judgmental self-condemnation that is blocking out what you actually feel. But perhaps it is a deeply-embedded habit. No easy way to get rid of that sense of being a loser.

So how do you reconcile all these? There is no cookie cutter solution. The main key is simply acknowledging and discovering what it is you actually want, without judgment or condemnation. That is the starting place. You cannot choose what you want, but you can open your eyes to it. That itself is a discovery process. Try to think about alternatives that match up to what you actually want... when you imagine them, how do you feel? If you try them out, how do you feel? That's how you discover more clearly what will work with your internal psychology. 

You say that not putting in your work in your field is "clearly not sustainable," but is that really true? Perhaps you need to find a less-demanding job, perhaps one out of science. Maybe that's really what you want to do but are afraid of admitting to yourself: that you don't care about science anymore. 

Basically, you have to get in touch with your emotions. That's also why I so highly recommend psychoanalytic/psychodynamic therapy for seekers. 

Oh, and use this entire situation as a springboard to the spiritual. Do Ramana Maharshi's self-inquiry continuously as you face and deal with these problems.

One day, you will be ready to surrender, and allow these problems to solve themselves. Until then, consider these recommendations.

Again, thanks for a detailed reply. I have thought of making changes, but it seems like some of these problems are so fundamental that they would follow me wherever I go. So why not try and reconcile them internally before making irreversible external changes. To that end..
Is it possible to indulge in the usual career-ambition and career-activity, with a kind of playfulness (as opposed to trying to use success to escape death as i was doing before) ,  while on the self-inuiry Path? Due to the nature of my career (physics), at least a part of this ambition is and parts of the activity are not that different from spiritual motivations (understanding fundamental Reality). Of course it will come with a load of other things with no immediate spiritual significance (writing papers, giving talks, competition etc ) to it. But well, still, its at least the good part can sustain me through the not-so-good part. 

But if a career-ambition is a big obstacle to The Path, then that's another story.. 

[FoxFoxFox]

@winterknight As you say, it is hard. Unfortunately i don't think getting into a philosophical debate with a skeptic would do any good for convincing them. Of course we know that there really is no such a thing as a consciousness, or mind, or the brain, or the body etc. and that THIS is the answer. This is a very simple thing, but sadly people tend to overcomplicated things. Thank you for your answer. I think i'm just gonna hold up a flower and be "nobly" silent

[winterknight]

2 minutes ago, graded24 said:

Again, thanks for a detailed reply. I have thought of making changes, but it seems like some of these problems are so fundamental that they would follow me wherever I go. So why not try and reconcile them internally before making irreversible external changes. To that end..
Is it possible to indulge in the usual career-ambition and career-activity, with a kind of playfulness (as opposed to trying to use success to escape death as i was doing before) ,  while on the self-inuiry Path? Due to the nature of my career (physics), at least a part of this ambition is and parts of the activity are not that different from spiritual motivations (understanding fundamental Reality). Of course it will come with a load of other things with no immediate spiritual significance (writing papers, giving talks, competition etc ) to it. But well, still, its at least the good part can sustain me through the not-so-good part. 

But if a career-ambition is a big obstacle to The Path, then that's another story.. 

Yes, it's perfectly possible to engage in career ambition and activity with the self-inquiry path. What's much harder may be to deal with the depression and anxiety you may generate if you are telling yourself you are engaging in it with a kind of playfulness, when you actually are still pushing yourself and forcing yourself to do things that you don't really want to do.

But you have to decide that yourself... and as you say, you can try it out and see how it goes.

But self-inquiry is in itself compatible with anything you do, any career path or ambition, so long as between the two, self-inquiry is the priority -- at all times, that's where your main focus should be.

[graded24]

28 minutes ago, winterknight said:

Yes, it's perfectly possible to engage in career ambition and activity with the self-inquiry path. What's much harder may be to deal with the depression and anxiety you may generate if you are telling yourself you are engaging in it with a kind of playfulness, when you actually are still pushing yourself and forcing yourself to do things that you don't really want to do.

But you have to decide that yourself... and as you say, you can try it out and see how it goes.

But self-inquiry is in itself compatible with anything you do, any career path or ambition, so long as between the two, self-inquiry is the priority -- at all times, that's where your main focus should be.

Most earning livelihood methods would come invariably with two kinds of thoughts: competition and survival. Both are me-my-thoughts. They provide a kind of orientation to the person by organizing their 'to-do's in a hierarchy of priority and, perhaps more importantly, answering  'what should i do' questions on multiple scales, from their day to day activity to big career moves. It is very hard to orient oneself in a profession if one disregard me-thoughts. Can I orient myself with me-thoughts while simultaneously inquiring who these thoughts are arising to? 

[Shin]

@winterknight

So we should basically just inquire in what we are ?

For now I don't use words anymore, I just concentrate on the point behind my eyes, where I feel I am but ain't (there is just empty space).

It is like I was locked into this perception field around that body/mind, but sometimes I can feel it's just me being stuck here, rather than what I really am.

It is like I was a camera of perception around it, but this camera could be anywhere else.

 

Edited November 12, 2018 by Shin

[Preetom]

@winterknight

This is a practice related question.

The self-inquiry beings as following/seeking the 'I' feeling. But after some time there comes to a point when a sort of effortless witnessing happens. There is no longer attachment to any particular object. The attention is loose...just a simple knowing of presence prevails.

So at that time, is it better to stay in that relaxed witnessing mode or should I keep probing and seeking the source of this 'knowing' actively until a surrender happens on it's own?

Note: In that mode, 'I' is not felt as something located anywhere particularly. Even the mind movements to seek in different directions are witnessed inside a borderless, aware presence.

 

[non_nothing]

@winterknight Does self-inquiry is the practice for awaiting an experience to come into?, not for an intellectual answer as It can be understood by the mind, but not fully embraced within lets say every cell?

[Jordan94]

@winterknight about psychoanalysis therapy, would it be a problem to change the therapist often ? Basically I move to another city/country every 1 to 3 months usually

[Salvijus]

@winterknight what do you think about Mooji or Papaji?

 

What mudra do you keep, or where do you keep your hands when you do self-enquiry in sitting position?

[Lynnel]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Absolutely

Law of attraction baby. Whatever your heart most desires to know it will ultimately receive an answer to. And if you desire nothing you will get nothing.

This is hilarious because the number one question I'm trying to understand is how the law of attraction REALLY works.

Like is it all a illusion so you can make it however you like ? Can you actually manifest ? Am I (what I) is creating whose reality ? etc. Can't wait to discover that !  

[RichardY]

 

[Pouya]

7 hours ago, winterknight said:

If I understand you correctly, yes. But you do say "Now for me the inside is gone..." Who is that "me" that is in that statement "for me"?

A no self experienced happened lately and I experienced myself as everything that is happening right now. I wasn't percieving outside from inside but i was the outside. I don't think I realized the Truth or something because I feel deluded and lost tho.

No idea of me anymore but what is the experience that is happening doesnt make any sense. It seems like no matter Physical or mental (dream like), it is like more lies.

[Emanyalpsid]

1 hour ago, Pouya said:

A no self experienced happened lately and I experienced myself as everything that is happening right now. I wasn't percieving outside from inside but i was the outside. I don't think I realized the Truth or something because I feel deluded and lost tho.

No idea of me anymore but what is the experience that is happening doesnt make any sense. It seems like no matter Physical or mental (dream like), it is like more lies.

Congratulations, you dissolved the self. You see, there is no truth, that is only the believe and search of the ego. Your ego makes a seperation between your sensory perception and the subject, the self, through thought. So, if you don't think, you are enlightened from this seperation, and you perceive reality as it is without interference of the ego.

Don't feel deluded and lost, you lost your ego, but you are now part of everything, as everything you perceive is you. Although in the beginning this feels quite unusual, so I understand your feelings.

All words and thoughts are attemps of the ego to give meaning to itself. Word or thought = meaning.

Although this does not mean you should not think. There is a difference between practical thought to survive and looking for a truth.

Edited November 12, 2018 by Emanyalpsid

[winterknight]

7 hours ago, graded24 said:

Most earning livelihood methods would come invariably with two kinds of thoughts: competition and survival. Both are me-my-thoughts. They provide a kind of orientation to the person by organizing their 'to-do's in a hierarchy of priority and, perhaps more importantly, answering  'what should i do' questions on multiple scales, from their day to day activity to big career moves. It is very hard to orient oneself in a profession if one disregard me-thoughts. Can I orient myself with me-thoughts while simultaneously inquiring who these thoughts are arising to? 

So I have two answers here. The first is: yes, you can. It may take a little practice at first, like learning to juggle, but yes.

But second is that when I read this, I feel here is that there is within you there is some kind of conflict in you about the spiritual work. And so, like a parent, you're telling yourself, "Ok, I'll let you have your weird little self-inquiry hobby, as long as it doesn't interfere with your homework." I feel the grip of that inner parent super tight, unwilling to let go.

These fears arise because you are identified as the doer. But in fact, believing this is like watching a movie and believing that if you slack off, the hero of the movie is not going to be able to fight the bad guys. You're not in the movie, actually. You're sitting comfortably on your sofa, and what the hero does has nothing to do with you. 

But that's ok. Move at the level you are comfortable with.