Question for those with enlighetnment experienes

[Raptorsin7]

Can you transition from an egoic state to an enlightened state/state of no self in the course of a 60 minute sit on a consistent basis or is it difficult to get back to that peak state?

Edited August 28, 2019 by Raptorsin7

[TrynaBeTurquoise]

Its paradoxical and doesn't work that way. If you are talking about true enlightenment 

[Raptorsin7]

@TrynaBeTurquoise@TrynaBeTurquoise You're right I did a poor job framing the question. I equated the experience of no self with the experience of enlightenment.  Change enlightenment to a feeling no self where you become reality then what do you think?

[DocHoliday]

Rather than trying to get from A to B, try to see how there is absolutely no differnce between the two. Even "after" enlightenment, ego still remains. Furthermore, drawing such a heavy line between the "egoic" state and the "enlightened" state is duality. It's Non-Duality you'd want to reach, i.e. realizing that there are no real or true separations between anything. 

But, well, do whatever feels good for you. If you like so sit for an hour consistently, then do that. Just don't get caught up in all kinds of conceptual stuff, focus on the greater Actuality of it all.

Edited August 28, 2019 by DocHoliday
Reason for edit: typos and stuff

[Raptorsin7]

But from my perspective/experience I still live in a duality so speaking of my own experiences in terms of non-dual wouldn't make sense because it would just be thought and not grounded in actual experience. I'm basically dual until I  get a glimpse of non-dual and from that point is it just permanent non dual or do people mostly go back to how they perceived reality prior to the experience?@DocHoliday

Edited August 28, 2019 by Raptorsin7

[How to be wise]

22 minutes ago, Raptorsin7 said:

Can you transition from an egoic state to an enlightened state/state of no self in the course of a 60 minute sit on a consistent basis or is it difficult to get back to that peak state?

Not only did I have over a hundred enlightenment experiences, I was able to shed a large part of my ego off completely. The only spiritual practice I ever did was 2 years of The Work of Byron Katie, which is a form of self inquiry. I did on average 90 mins per day, with three sessions each 30 mins. I did one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one at night time. That’s it. I’ve never done a retreat before. 

[DocHoliday]

@Raptorsin7  Hah, I appreciate your honesty and self-reflection. If I understand your question correctly, then yes, people can definitely slip back into perceiving reality from a dual perspective, but it all depends on the depth of the insight I guess. If you get an intense enough Breakthrough, you may permanently keep the non-dual perspective. But even then, as Leo often mentioned, the distinction between non-dual and dual is also just duality, so one can never escape duality forever and ever. One has to come to the point of realizing the Absolute Relativity of it all.

[Raptorsin7]

@DocHoliday Haha thanks that made me smile. If you don't mind me asking, have you had a non-dual experience and if you did was it sustained?

[DocHoliday]

@Raptorsin7  Well, that's an interesting question. I wouldn't say that I had "one" distinct experience of non-duality. Enlightenment and the realization of non-duality is not comparable to the experience of eating an ice cream, let's say. So, it's not like eating that ice cream and then saying "Okay, I ate it, now I'm done, now I never need to eat any ice cream ever again because I had the experience." No, it's not quite like that. There is a moment of realization, of course, but from then on, one either embodies his insight - or not. That's what mmakes it permanent or not. That's (probably) the best way I can put it into words right now.

[Wlangr]

19 minutes ago, How to be wise said:

Not only did I have over a hundred enlightenment experiences, I was able to shed a large part of my ego off completely. 

Is it true? 

Can you absolutely know that it's true? 

[Raptorsin7]

@DocHoliday  Thanks for the insights. Good luck man

[DocHoliday]

@Raptorsin7  So, if you would ask me whether or not I have had experiences of non-duality and enlightenment like having eaten scoops of ice cream, then yes, I've had some of those. But, then again, even the "experience" of eating a scoop of ice cream never stops to affect you life, you know? It's not like you eat it, digest it, shit it out, and then you're done. The experience of having eating that scoop if ice cream will still affect you for the rest of your life in some subtle ways. It's kind of the same with "experiences" of enlightenment. 

You know when back in school you had those "Aaaahh-ha!"-moments when you finally understood a math problem or somthing like that? Enlightenment experiences etc. are basically just like these A-ha moments but on a metaphysical, spiritual, [EDIT] existential level. And just like that math problem, when you didn't work on the further embodiment of your insight, years later you might have already forgotten what you first understood. So, you always have to "work" on it and go deeper. It just becomes your new, natural way of life.

Edited August 28, 2019 by DocHoliday
Reason for edit: typos and stuff

[Raptorsin7]

@DocHoliday That makes sense. Its tough to talk about this stuff from my perspective because i'm starting to realize how limited my perspective is.

[DocHoliday]

@Raptorsin7  That's good! That's progress. Happens time and time again.

[Neorez]

@How to be wise  Do the 30minutes include filling in the worksheet to find some believes or do you know in advance what you're gonna focus on? I can imagine it gets harder the more you purify yourself to find things to work with?

[How to be wise]

6 hours ago, Neorez said:

@How to be wise  Do the 30minutes include filling in the worksheet to find some believes or do you know in advance what you're gonna focus on? I can imagine it gets harder the more you purify yourself to find things to work with?

No, I fill the worksheets beforehand. The 30 minutes are just for the inquiry.

For me, it’s not hard to fill in the worksheets because you can always find something that you don’t like about your life. If there was nothing that you didn’t like about reality, your life would be perfect and you would be living in heaven.

A good way to find a worksheet is to think why your life isn’t heaven. Every reason will be a worksheet of its own. Until when you finish, you should be able to say that your life is literally heaven! The perfect life!

 

[Mason Riggle]

 

8 hours ago, DocHoliday said:

@Raptorsin7  Well, that's an interesting question. I wouldn't say that I had "one" distinct experience of non-duality. Enlightenment and the realization of non-duality is not comparable to the experience of eating an ice cream, let's say. So, it's not like eating that ice cream and then saying "Okay, I ate it, now I'm done, now I never need to eat any ice cream ever again because I had the experience." No, it's not quite like that. There is a moment of realization, of course, but from then on, one either embodies his insight - or not. That's what mmakes it permanent or not. That's (probably) the best way I can put it into words right now.

 @DocHoliday I liked where you were going with this.. in describing what it's 'not like'.. and it struck me to think about what would be a good way to describe it.. or try to...

I think it's more like when you learn some concept that wasn't getting through before.. like when you were little and learning math, and perhaps you understood why 2 + 2 equals 4.. because adding is pretty simple for a child to get.. you put things with other things and count them all.. but the concept of multiplication is more difficult to grasp at first.. but when you get it.. you never go back to not getting it.. and yet, you don't have to keep 'getting it' to have it.. it's also no longer something you seek to get, because you have it.. yet you still have your concepts of addition, which still make sense.  But you can also forget and lose concepts if you don't use them or 'embody them'.. it's possible also, to perform complex math without really understanding the complex concepts that allow you to do so, by getting the basics on an intellectual level.. for example.. you can know that Pi is about 3.14 and use that to calculate the surface area of a table without really understanding why Pi is 3.14, and how that number gets you the Area when you multiply it by the diameter.  

Edited August 28, 2019 by Mason Riggle

[Inliytened1]

9 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

Can you transition from an egoic state to an enlightened state/state of no self in the course of a 60 minute sit on a consistent basis or is it difficult to get back to that peak state?

You can't pick and choose when you hit a non-dual state - it happens when it wants to.  That said its been said that 5-Meo is so powerful that it will thrust you into non-duality rather effortlessly.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Inliytened1

[Forestluv]

10 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

But from my perspective/experience I still live in a duality so speaking of my own experiences in terms of non-dual wouldn't make sense because it would just be thought and not grounded in actual experience. I'm basically dual until I  get a glimpse of non-dual and from that point is it just permanent non dual or do people mostly go back to how they perceived reality prior to the experience?

You likely have had some direct non-dual experience. Have you ever been so immersed in something that you lost track of yourself and time? Perhaps being in a flow state while playing a sport or musical instrument. Perhaps being in awe while observing a night sky. Perhaps a moment of pure love with another in which there was no "me" and "you" - just love. . . Then we often "snap out of it" and return to conditioned ways of thinking and perceiving. So, from a personal perspective - there can be this sense of flipping back and forth between duality and nonduality. 

Imagine a person that only saw the Heads side of a coin their entire life. If they caught a glimpse of the Tails side it may be an awakening - that it's not all Heads. That person may have the sense that they are going back and forth from perceiving Heads and Tails. That would be the subjective human experience. Yet transcending that. . . both Heads and Tails are the actual coin. We create the duality of Heads vs Tails, yet it is both one coin. Similarly, if we catch glimpses of nonduality it can be an awakening experience. It may start to feel like we are flipping back and forth between duality and nonduality - yet they are both the coin.  There desire to achieve a permanent no-mind nondual state is at the human level. The person has created a story of things called nondual states and dual states as well as a thing called permanence within a timeline. 

Rather than framing it as a state that can be permanently attained, I think it's more accurate and helpful to frame it as something that can be transcended Now. There is transcendence of the whole kit-n-kaboodle. All of it, including imaginations of no-mind, mind, duality, nonduality etc.

 

 

 

[Raptorsin7]

@Serotoninluv  Yes I've had a similar experience in basketball. I guess I need to continue with the meditations. Thanks for the advice.