Isn't life purpose a distraction?

[Akira]

If you are genuine in your pursuit of enlightenment, isn't life purpose a distraction? All that time cultivating and maintaining passion and skill in life purpose could be aimed toward enlightenment. There are many ways even the noblest of life purposes could conflict with the direct pursuit of enlightenment. Any thoughts chaps?

[Leo Gura]

What are you gonna do after enlightenment?

Eat Cheetos in your mother's basement?

[RichardY]

Vocation instead?

 

 

[universe]

I always make the analogy that life purpose is like the ultimate race car. It will make you happy like nothing else in this world can do, no relationships, no yacht, no house, no sex will be on that level. It is the greatest gift you can get. When you are on track with your life purpose its like activating the "easy" mode in life. However hard and long hours you are going to work.

So yeah it can be seen as a distraction. Who is distracted?

[Ananta]

32 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

What are you gonna do after enlightenment?

Eat Cheetos in your mother's basement?

???

[DrewNows]

@Akiratricky is “the idea of enlightenment”

”do nothing” is the way to headlessness. 

Change nothing, observe your thoughts, feelings and fears in your daily life. See what is delusion and what is the fact. Where does identity come into play and what stories are being told? What expectations have you? Assumptions are not to be made 

[SgtPepper]

I find life purpose to be interwoven with spirituality. 

[VioletFlame]

@universe Exactly!! I love it, especially the racecar analogy, hence why life purpose gives "drive"  

To have a mission in life is to get out of bed in the morning. It's to wake up everyday feeling inspired and ready to experience the endless possibilities, and it keeps you motivated.

When you are following your calling, you are not only giving to yourself but also giving to the world because you're doing it from a total place of heart, out of genuine love & authenticity. I think spirituality is directly related to having a life passion/mission/purpose.

6 hours ago, universe said:

It is the greatest gift you can get.

 

Edited November 28, 2018 by VioletFlame

[Joseph Maynor]

On the one hand you are Enlightened, on the other hand the illusion of Ego persists.  I find that it's best to work both ends of this paradox.  This means that you feed Ego a noble vision on the one hand, but on the other hand you don't cling to Ego or Vision.

And this is gonna flip out a lot of people out on here.  Just as Life Purpose can be a distraction, so can Enlightenment.  Enlightenment can be a distraction.  Nobody talks about that.  I've written one essay about it. 

Edited November 28, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[mochafrap]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

What are you gonna do after enlightenment?

Eat Cheetos in your mother's basement?

Why not?

[mochafrap]

28 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

On the one hand you are Enlightened, on the other hand the illusion of Ego persists.  I find that it's best to work both ends of this paradox.  This means that you feed Ego a noble vision on the one hand, but on the other hand you don't cling to Ego or Vision.

And this is gonna flip out a lot of people out on here.  Just as Life Purpose can be a distraction, so can Enlightenment.  Enlightenment can be a distraction.  Nobody talks about that.  I've written one essay about it. 

Can you provide a brief summary of your essay?

[Joseph Maynor]

1 hour ago, mochafrap said:

Can you provide a brief summary of your essay?

Sure.  People use Enlightenment and Non-duality to basically avoid going out into the world and turning ideas into results for themselves and for other people.  It's can be a form of spiritual bypassing.  It can be a way to remain in a comfort mentality in life.

Edited November 28, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[zambize]

2 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Sure.  People use Enlightenment and Non-duality to basically avoid going out into the world and turning ideas into results for themselves and for other people.  It's can be a form of spiritual bypassing.  It can be a way to remain in a comfort mentality in life.

Is that essay somewhere I can access, or is that personal?

[VioletFlame]

@Leo Gura

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

What are you gonna do after enlightenment?

Eat Cheetos in your mother's basement?

I don't want to go into another sad-Blue-dad story but this is him all over. He's lived in his mother's basement his whole life pretty much and growing up around him, now in my adulthood and watching him waste his life in fear, delusion & political ideology hurts me.

His only salvation is defending this "precious" country and venting/lamenting/emotionally gallivanting, even hitting it off with Alex Jones. He doesn't recognize the tremendous amount of school attacks that went down in this past year alone within this country, in which all were committed by caucasians. If you're outside this country, everyone else are terrorists but if you ask me, his own mind is the terrorist. 

I think the closest he currently is to God is the documentations of UFOs. 

I wish there was something I could do to help him, so I don't have to witness him grow into an old cynical man with not a shimmer of love & peace. But it's not too easy to even communicate or get a word in with a rigid right-winged, dogmatic thinker, neither is it easy to express your separate opinions, let alone help or convince them to take a few deep breaths, read a book on Taoism or watch a Leo video. I'm not out to control or dictate his rigid belief systems, I'm aware this isn't for everyone if it doesn't interest them first, but all he does is curse, complain & flirt with despair and sometimes I just wish he wasn't so ignorant to the ultimate answers in which he seeks (eg;finding peace,ending suffering) that are right there in front of him if he just looked, they just keep aimlessly swimming around his vision, like flies. 

Edited November 28, 2018 by VioletFlame

[non_nothing]

1 hour ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Enlightenment can be a distraction.  Nobody talks about that

In the thread "don't chase enlightenment" what that was all about and I also included with fix books for those people instead of enlightenment masturbation. Hopefully after fixes one can achieve enlightenment with steady clear intention

[zambize]

4 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Here it is.  It's very short.

You can tell ideological people because their writing and speaking is clothed in theory, in ideology. T his is one way that Turquoise gives itself away to Coral.  It's almost like ideological people are hiding within the theory -- they've become one with the theory.  And they give off a zombie-like energy.  Non-duality can be treated as an ideology too, I see that all the time!  That's a common thing for me to see.  Enlightenment gurus are often very ideological . People at stages Blue, Green, and Turquoise are often ideological.

Thank you for giving me one more thing to watch out for <3 Do you think there is any necessity to having the ideology to get that far, and then it's something that should be stripped away?  Or, do you feel like one can stay away from ideology at all levels of development?

[Joseph Maynor]

10 minutes ago, non_nothing said:

In the thread "don't chase enlightenment" what that was all about and I also included with fix books for those people instead of enlightenment masturbation. Hopefully after fixes one can achieve enlightenment with steady clear intention

That's interesting.  Yeah, what I'm saying is that you can be Enlightened without the theory.  You can lose the theory.  And that's a cool place to get to.  You're not always trying to fit reality into a theory.  In fact, people cause themselves a lot of suffering by trying to do that.  You just let everything be the way that it is on the one hand, and watch Ego do its thing on the other hand keeping your ideal Vision in mind as a guide.

Edited November 28, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[VioletFlame]

2 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

And this is gonna flip out a lot of people out on here.  Just as Life Purpose can be a distraction, so can Enlightenment.  Enlightenment can be a distraction.  Nobody talks about that.  I've written one essay about it. 

I respect this. Do you suspect that the constant longing/seeking for Enlightenment could turn slightly solipsistic or egocentric for some which is an obvious distraction? Because there's that level of attachment I think there where you're having that fixated, almost perfectionist approach on something that could be holding you back? I think there are many traps to Enlightenment though, which is just part of its intriguing journey. 

I've noticed this egoic superficial distraction within the New Age community alone, just people who claim they're "Enlightened" but they are missing obvious elements, one being that they are walking around talking & bragging about it. Two being that it's some sort of fashion, some suddenly wearing turbans, even though they're white as hell (cultural appropriation much? Is this the new trend?) I don't know man, I think they do this out loud because it gives them some sort of unique identity, and puts them in a content superior place, I mean people are a tad intimidated by them when they speak and people will listen to what they have to say or believe what they have to say, or even follow them blindly, even if they're speaking in tongues. 

And I think it's safe to say their collection of knowledge is clearly governed by plagiarized "Buddhist" social media platitudes.

Edited November 28, 2018 by VioletFlame

[mochafrap]

51 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Sure.  People use Enlightenment and Non-duality to basically avoid going out into the world and turning ideas into results for themselves and for other people.  It's can be a form of spiritual bypassing.  It can be a way to remain in a comfort mentality in life.

Why is there an expectation of going into the world to do X Y Z, and why is there is a judgement made if one does not do X Y Z? Just like I asked Leo, why not live in your mom's basement and eat Cheetos? Conversely, why not go into the world? As far as I understand it, enlightenment (one strain of apparently many interpretations) recognizes all as concepts except for the consciousness itself, which is a concept when discussed but not a concept when purely experienced. Choices outside of this pure experience are equivalent "why nots". Why would enlightenment suggest any one direction or self (egoic)-imposed concepts, such as that of doing X Y Z in the world, versus doing whatever flows most intuitively, even if that means being lazy af?

I am mostly playing devil's advocate in order to learn. I'm not sure of my own answers to these questions.

Edited November 28, 2018 by mochafrap

[Joseph Maynor]

19 minutes ago, mochafrap said:

Why is there an expectation of going into the world to do X Y Z, and why is there is a judgement made if one does not do X Y Z? Just like I asked Leo, why not live in your mom's basement and eat Cheetos? Conversely, why not go into the world? As far as I understand it, enlightenment (one strain of apparently many interpretations) recognizes all as concepts except for the consciousness itself, which is a concept when discussed but not a concept when purely experienced. Choices outside of this pure experience are equivalent "why nots". Why would enlightenment suggest any one direction or self (egoic)-imposed concepts, such as that of doing X Y Z in the world, versus doing whatever flows most intuitively, even if that means being lazy af?

I am mostly playing devil's advocate in order to learn. I'm not sure of my own answers to these questions.

Because you don't really want to do that.  Nobody wants to live that kind of a life.  That's a shitty life.  The key is to find that source for you that you can track that is a good life for you.  Sure, you can live in a monastery if that's authentic to you.  But the relevant question and the only relevant questions is, is that what's best for me?  And only an individual can decide this for themselves.  In other words, the answer comes only inside each person.  And people who come up with a great answer for themselves are fortunate in life. 

Edited November 28, 2018 by Joseph Maynor