Questions to Leo and other seekers of Truth

[purerogue]

Can we at least agree that Nothing of this has ever even happened and that we are trying to build module of reality out of logic, that is nothing more then belief and concept that hold no truth?   

Or maybe no, I am interested in your thoughts, can you accept that everything that you think you think is a lie? 

Edited April 6, 2019 by purerogue

[vpandey]

11 hours ago, Nahm said:

@vpandey

Take your current understanding of actuality and assumption, and simply reverse them. 

Also, how do you know this craving for this 'absolute' state of 'perfection' is not just another devilry of ego?

Seeking is not a desire of the ego, it is the deconstruction of the ego. 

There is no ego present in the realization. 

It’s much more radical than you are yet suspecting. 

Godspeed.

I'm not gonna reverse my understanding of reality just because you tell me (sorry!). Need some experience or evidence. And if understanding of Absolute depends on experience e.g. DMT then it makes even less sense to resort to changing my viewpoint. I guess I will experientially understand your point rather than cognitively. Also, 'seeking is not a desire of ego' seems baseless. How about plenty of well respected sexually and physically abusive gurus? If they were enlightened and dissolved their ego they would know that it's not only about their sexual gratification but also desires of women that have to be considered. If God(love,truth) is everywhere, God(love,truth) is the women too. But alas that's not how it is. But thank you for your comment, through rational discourse can we be more understanding

11 hours ago, cetus56 said:

A state of utter satisfaction can't be denied. 

Just grist for the mill.

State of heroin intake is pretty satisfying but that doesn't mean it's truth. Please clarify what you are saying

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@vpandey It is not a state. It is an Absolute.

See, the problem is, you don't have any reference point for what an Absolute is. You don't even understand that an Absolute is possible. Because all you've experienced in your life are relative things.

Absolute means it is true under all possible circumstances. It was true before the Big Bang happened and it will be true after our universe ends.

An Absolute is not state-dependent, it is not a function of the human mind, it is not an experience, it is not an perception, it is not belief, it is not an assumption, it is not a theory, it is not a thought, it is not an intuition. It is ABSOLUTE!

You have changed my assumption that Absolute is not a state. That clarified my confusion a bit. Now I understand that there has to be 'faith' like religious people say and I have to experientially or emotionally (if that's close to correct wording!) get it.

Thank you everyone for your comments. Peace out.

[Nahm]

16 minutes ago, vpandey said:

I'm not gonna reverse my understanding of reality just because you tell me (sorry!). Need some experience or evidence.

Right, that’s more what I meant.. A pointing towards finding out the truth for yourself, the approach, discovering the actuality by becoming aware of assumptions, like you were born, and you will die.

And if understanding of Absolute depends on experience e.g. DMT then it makes even less sense to resort to changing my viewpoint.

Is that experience / actuality, or assumption? Take a look at how you arrived at any viewpoints.  Also, I’d consider the approach of expanding ‘viewpoints’, ultimately all viewpoints must be seen through, seen for what they all are. Each viewpoint is a bar of a prison wall. 

I guess I will experientially understand your point rather than cognitively.

Yes, find out experientially. ?

Also, 'seeking is not a desire of ego' seems baseless.

Maybe initially, but not for long. Notice resistance to truth. (not in these comments, in life, and on the path)

How about plenty of well respected sexually and physically abusive gurus? If they were enlightened and dissolved their ego they would know that it's not only about their sexual gratification but also desires of women that have to be considered.

Says who?

If God(love,truth) is everywhere, God(love,truth) is the women too.

?

But alas that's not how it is.

?

But thank you for your comment, through rational discourse can we be more understanding

??♥️

 

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, vpandey said:

Now I understand that there has to be 'faith' like religious people say and I have to experientially or emotionally (if that's close to correct wording!) get it.

No, not faith.

Does a scientist need faith to perform a lab experiement?

It's just like that, except instead of some data, you will discover God.

[Leo Gura]

8 hours ago, FoxFoxFox said:

It is only unreal from a very specific viewpoint, which is of the neophyte meditator. There is no such thing as 'asbolute', 'maya' or 'real'. This all sounds very confusing, no? To get people interested in the work, teachers often use bad metaphors and analogies. It's like how they teach you Newtonian physics before quantum. I find this approach to be more confusing than helpful. 

Dude, you're just confusing the poor guy.

Meet the person where he is at.

All this nondual one-ups-manship on the forum is starting to feel gross.

[moon777light]

15 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

No, not faith.

Does a scientist need faith to perform a lab experiement?

It's just like that, except instead of some data, you will discover God.

i thought that faith and a huge yearning/believing must be present to awaken? That that's what separates people who just do techniques all their life vs people who do techniques with love and faith. That that is what keeps you going through the dark, frustrating times.

 

[Ar_Senses]

19 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Dude, you're just confusing the poor guy.

Meet the person where he is at.

All this nondual one-ups-manship on the forum is starting to feel gross.

100% agree! ?

It’s like at the Vipassana retreat, where you are going insane, everything is itching and aking, you can’t fucking feel anything in your body and opening your eyes to look around, to see how everybody else are able to handle it - and, of course, they are sitting still like a solid rock. Even nuclear bomb won’t disturb them. 

But the truth is that most of them are going through the same shit that you are.

Edited April 6, 2019 by Ar_Senses

[now is forever]

57 minutes ago, moon777light said:

i thought that faith and a huge yearning/believing must be present to awaken? That that's what separates people who just do techniques all their life vs people who do techniques with love and faith. That that is what keeps you going through the dark, frustrating times.

 

in a sense yes but in another sense no - faith is very settled very limited as it usually sets its trust into something. what happens if faith fails? will we ignore it and go on believing? believing, yes as everything is already that. faith means being faithful to faith - that’s very limiting.

faith in yourself, faith in finding a way, faith in guidance, faith in love, faith in the ability to understand and faith in standing up again. yes. you need to be a seeker for that.

Edited April 6, 2019 by now is forever

[moon777light]

i get what your saying but if we have no faith in Truth, doesn't it make truth much more elusive and hard to understand? I don't mean faith in the sense of religious people who just believe and dont do anything about it. I mean faith alongside meditating, inquiring who am i, yoga, whatever one does.

[now is forever]

33 minutes ago, moon777light said:

i get what your saying but if we have no faith in Truth, doesn't it make truth much more elusive and hard to understand? I don't mean faith in the sense of religious people who just believe and dont do anything about it. I mean faith alongside meditating, inquiring who am i, yoga, whatever one does.

the problem with faith is that it is very relative, truth is not.

you can have faith without truth but you can’t have truth without faith?

Edited April 6, 2019 by now is forever

[peanutspathtotruth]

50 minutes ago, moon777light said:

i get what your saying but if we have no faith in Truth, doesn't it make truth much more elusive and hard to understand? I don't mean faith in the sense of religious people who just believe and dont do anything about it. I mean faith alongside meditating, inquiring who am i, yoga, whatever one does.

The word faith is not the best to use because it is often correlated to the religious faith as a blind belief.

The faith you talk about is indeed very important. But instead of belief I would rather call it trust. Before you have direct experience of truth, there can only be belief and curiosity. Curiosity is good. But as soon as you are having a mystical experience, whereafter you see directly how your ego gets restructured you can actually understand this process. This is why psychedelics are so powerful. Yes you get back to ground zero. But you KNOW from direct experience that there is a higher truth. For example you can experience love as the absolute, nothingness, or some other facet. Most importantly, you experience truth in comparison to illusion. And you notice how illusion works.

From then on, it's important to remind yourself of this higher Self which you are. Paul Brunton has an amazing book centered around this idea called "The Short Path to Enlightenment". Yes the title sounds off-putting but it's a really good book. Adyashanti highly recommends. I think he was the first bringing Ramana's teachings to the west. So faith for me is these two things: Trust in the perfection of existence and remembrance of your true Self. It is only possible once you have seen it.

[moon777light]

5 hours ago, peanutspathtotruth said:

But instead of belief I would rather call it trust.

yes thats what i was talking about

5 hours ago, peanutspathtotruth said:

From then on, it's important to remind yourself of this higher Self which you are. Paul Brunton has an amazing book centered around this idea called "The Short Path to Enlightenment". Yes the title sounds off-putting but it's a really good book. Adyashanti highly recommends. I think he was the first bringing Ramana's teachings to the west. So faith for me is these two things: Trust in the perfection of existence and remembrance of your true Self. It is only possible once you have seen it.

ill check it out, thanks

[Joseph Maynor]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

All this nondual one-ups-manship on the forum is starting to feel gross.

This is exactly how I feel and why I kinda wanna stay away from discussing Enlightenment with other people for a while.  I started to feel gross at myself too.  Like, what the hell am I arguing for.  It's easy to fall into the trap of becoming kind of an evangelist of your own view of Enlightenment.   And that feels good on the surface, but it causes deep pain at a deeper level, and then it's hard to break free from that because you kind of get addicted to it.  It's like being addicted to a partner in a bad relationship.  It's a very conflicting kind of thing.  On the one hand you still get something out of a bad relationship, but you also get a lot of misery too.  And then I started to realize, why am I doing this?  Am I really advancing the kind of ball that I think I am?  See, in my mind, I had this kind of savior's attitude that other people needed my insights.  But I'm not so sure how that actually played out.  I mean, it would be interesting to find out if I did actually help others or if that was mostly just not the case.  I've really only had a few people tell me that they learned something from me.  So, here I am playing the martyr, and for what?  Does it make me feel good?  Not really.  It kinda makes me feel stressed.  It kinda makes me feel like I'm trying to prove myself.  But I don't need to prove myself.  There's absolutely no reason for me to need to prove myself or to fight with anyone else at all.  It's sick that the Ego-Mind even wants to go there and then get stuck there beating a dead horse until either someone shoots me or I shoot someone else.  This is why Zen Masters will punch you in the face.  It's hard to wake up when you're stuck in the Ego-Mind.  It's like being stuck in a bad relationship, it's hard to even know how to pull yourself out of that or to even muster the will to do so.  Something really dramatic almost has to happen to you for it to happen.  And then you go, oh shit, I was caught up.  And that wasn't how I wanna live or how I wanna be.  I'm so glad my Ego-Mind got popped out of that, because I was stuck in it again.  I go through cycles like this from time to time.  Usually it's when I'm integrating new insights and I feel like I wanna share those lessons with others, which initially comes from a good place and a noble place.  But then after fighting with people for a while, the Ego-Mind kinda takes over and I become zealous and evangelical and not very Enlightened or kind as a result.  And then I go back to not really wanting to talk about Enlightenment for a while.  So, there's these cycles with me.  I think teaching sometimes does me a disservice.  Sometimes I wonder if I should just give up teaching Enlightenment one on one and just stick to my writings which don't trigger me in that way.  It's that one on one teaching Enlightenment that tends to do me in the longer I play that role.  Somehow the Ego-Mind gets caught up and gets more arrogant and cock-sure and interpersonally abusive as a result.  But that is not the way I wanna be at all.  That's not healthy for me, let alone other people.  It makes me look pathetic and like a madman as well as the persons I am arguing with.  

Edited April 6, 2019 by Joseph Maynor

[Shadowraix]

Look, you aren't going to figure it out until you investigate for yourself. What we say won't properly translate if you haven't experienced what is being said. They are dangling pointers at that point. And because of this the mind will constantly find counter points to anything that is said. 

The moment we try to put it into words and especially under the restraints of rationality it's not it and often just continues to deviate away. 

You got a long road ahead. And it's a mindfuckery one. 

[vpandey]

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

No, not faith.

Does a scientist need faith to perform a lab experiement?

It's just like that, except instead of some data, you will discover God.

What I mean by 'faith' is doing years and years of yoga, taking an strange chemical substance etc to 'reach' Absolute infinity. One would need a certain kind of faith to perform those actions, as like you said it cannot be arrived through reason. Faith as in how Abraham had faith in God's message to sacrifice his son which appears psychopathic to the reasoning mind.

Scientist does has faith to start of with. He already has assumptions about reality if we are being hardcore sceptics. for.e.g the causality of things, the permanency of things, reliance on senses etc. On the other hand, he doesnot need faith to conduct actual experiments. To conduct the gold standard of double blind controlled study, one arrives it through systematic reasoning and reducing of biases. I guess scientists needs both faith (as in assumption) and reasoning to conduct lab experiment.

I shall be trying some psychedelics in the future but I'll have to make sure I'm not deluding myself too.

 

[Leo Gura]

What you need is a desire for Truth, radical openmindedness, and brual honesty with yourself.

The word faith is confusing to people because they then think that Truth is some kind of wishful thinking belief. It is anything but.

[kieranperez]

14 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

What you need is a desire for Truth, 

I want to add to this point because this is the kernal that even gets advanced mediators and hardcore yogis who can reach pretty deep states of samadhi but I wouldn’t really more enlightened than anyone else.

You have no real feasible shot if you don’t have a burning desire to really want to know what’s true. 

For those that like this here’s my advice:

break down your beliefs and question them. I actually recommend people start contemplating and doing what’s called (credit to Ralston) pre-manipulation communication from that place. Start just questioning your character. Where did it come from? Start practicing real honesty as your contemplations into your sense of self slowly come apart - which helps build momentum to more and more authenticity! 

The your break down and look into your beliefs, the more your thirst for truth and recognition of not knowing will start to blossom. A desire for Truth is a need. Start chipping away. The more you chip away and realize you don’t know, you’ll actually be more intrinsically motivated to seek truth at whatever cost. That might take awhile though because we really gotta get to our bones we don’t know. 

Having said that, do that while operating in the world. Satisfy your desires for sex, fun, until it’s exhausted. Burn the candle from both end and of the stick.

Personally I have a deep drive and thirst for truth but I’m so full of personal impurities and lower level needs and desires that I desperately need to handle. I personally have no inclination to stop seeking and contemplating. I’m miserable when I’m honest not connected with that in some way or another. So what I’m doing is handling both at the same time and ramping both of them up at the same time. They also empower each other. 

[cetus]

 

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

What you need is a desire for Truth

 There was a stirring within the absolute that set out to find truth. Guess what it found.

[vpandey]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

What you need is a desire for Truth

If I don't know the rewards of truth, how can I want it? Or anyone else for that matter. You must surely be talking about manifestations of truth that is appealing to the mind like eternal bliss, love, removal of suffering etc. From my experience of people online and real life, majority of us came to these esoteric teachings from a deep state of unhappiness (anxiety, depression, loneliness etc.) and we want to be more happy/peaceful. There is nothing wrong with that and is all and very expected. Naturally as humans we want more pleasure and less pain. So you are partially right, I need a deep desire for truth because of its potential rewards, not for truth's sake. But it's pretty damn impossible to invest decades doing yoga or meditation just for truth's sake. Takes some really stubborn to persist without rewards.

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

radical openmindedness, and brual honesty with yourself.

How does radical openmindedness and brutal honesty be applied to ourselves? We see ourselves with biases and filters and it's really doubtful we can be totally and utterly honest with ourselves. We can try our best though.

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

The word faith is confusing to people because they then think that Truth is some kind of wishful thinking belief. It is anything but.

Agreed on that. You have talked extensively on this topic of pre-rational and post-rational and it seems very sensible.

Edited April 7, 2019 by vpandey
clarifying

[Forestluv]

2 hours ago, vpandey said:

I need a deep desire for truth because of its potential rewards, not for truth's sake. But it's pretty damn impossible to invest decades doing yoga or meditation just for truth's sake. Takes some really stubborn to persist without rewards.

Seeking truth for truth’s sake is an orientation. It is a way of life. It is genuine seeking of truth and requires great courage. It can be simply called “seeking truth”.

Seekng truth for personal rewards can cause unhealthy psychological dynamics because the self is oriented toward seeking rewards, not truth. It can simply be called “seeking self-centered rewards”. Adding in the “truth” part can provide the self with some cover and allow it to avoid actual truth,. This often leads to a distorted view of truth . For example, someone in a relationship may claim they value the truth and want truth, yet if the primary fuel is self seeking rewards, truth, honesty and trust will become twisted within the relationship. Even worse, the false belief that one is seeking truth will actually prevent them from being open and willing to genuinely introspect and see the actual truth.

There is nothing wrong with seeking personal rewards, yet I think it’s a healthier psychological dynamic to be honest about it and drop the “truth” part. 

It’s like a scientist seeking  experimental results for personal rewards such as promotions and grant money. He would be highly biased and not oriented toward seeking the actual truth.