Studying Enlightenment Impedes Reaching Enlightenment

[Baul]

After a second failed attempt at performing the Neti Neti inquiry method, I've discovered something extraordinarily critical, if not totally imperative, to successfully performing this work. I have discovered that any beliefs, prior knowledge and/or convictions about reality that you hold (whether they be dictated to you in a science lecture by an esteemed professor, or by your parents, or by religious teachers, or by books, or by enlightenment gurus/lectures given by spiritual teachers, or even by Leo himself) must be completely extinguished and recognized as potential malarkey the second the work commences. You have to disregard everything, or completely unlearn everything. You have to admit to yourself that you don't know anything about anything authentically. If this admission is performed authentically, your awareness opens up and curiosity will naturally lead the way and the work itself (in the inquiry process after a question is asked, your mind should not be pointing to a belief or an idea that you may already hold. If you see an affirmation to a belief/an idea you have, arising to a question you have heard in your awareness (in presence), you have failed). The millisecond you recognize these affirmations, you have failed, as all affirmations are genuine to you whether you choose to see them that way or not. You must be genuinely curious and admittedly, dumb about everything. You must be extremely honest with yourself in this work. Also, I've realized that the more you do the work, the harder it becomes, because you have an expectation already set up for yourself in the work, including the future sequence of steps in inquiry (for example, in replaying Leo's Neti Neti video for every new inquiry session, you have a subconscious expectation of what's going to be said and done, which diverts your awareness to your thoughts about the experience and not to the experience itself). If you already have the logical answers known, either consciously or subconsciously, it is extremely difficult to not refer to them in your awareness when the questions are asked instead of searching for them. However, you must search for them.

Knowing this, I somewhat regreat soaking up all of that knowledge that now seems to be regressing my awareness work.

This is all I have to say. Now forget about everything I said, and just do the work.

No, but seriously. This is all bullshit -- everything that's been said. And everything that Leo said is bullshit, and everything else that anyone else has ever said for that matter. 

[Saarah]

@Baul you summed it up nicely! All these words and concepts, being told I'm eternal awareness, act as a buffer or layer from being able to touch the actual awareness, I end up resorting to these answers logically through the method but not... like in my bones, you know? And it feels like that's because the method makes sense and has been remembered intellectually, perhaps if not, I'd have reached conclusions more authentic, through a less linear but more enlightening path, it might help to use your own words like, for me 'knowing' came up, endless knowing, something that resonates more with you, I didn't do this for very long though as I figured it's not the right time for me to do this, I just had a phase of curiosity, the longer you attempt, maybe you can start to remove the already imposed ideas

 a little initial nudge can help, just not too much reading about it 

[FirstglimpseOMG]

Wow, we think ourself out of so many possibilities. 

[electroBeam]

@Baulare you saying that we should NOT read any enlightenment related videos, apart from techniques? Because if you are, I totally agree!!

that material is only useful to people who are already enlightened

Edited July 31, 2016 by electroBeam

[cetus]

@Baul Mooji explains this nicely in the first 15 mins. of this satsang. "mind can't help you here"

 

Edited July 31, 2016 by cetus56

[Leo Gura]

Obviously! That is told to you by every enlightened teacher (and myself) from day 1.

The problem is you don't understand it until like 10 years later.

The study is necessary UP TO A POINT. Then you have to let it go.

Like scaffolding around a skyscraper. Don't get attached to the scaffolding.

But denouncing the scaffolding is equally a newb mistake. Study is necessary and has its place. Otherwise you would be totally lost.

A delicate balance must be struck, and newbs suck at that. They always go too far to one side or the other. Newbs want a formula for enlightenment, a black/white answer, and no such thing exists.

[electroBeam]

@Leo Gura Why do you need to study the material? What advantages are there to hearing about dogma? I can understand learning techniques, but learning about enlightenment itself seems to me to have no place

[HereNowThisMoment]

@electroBeam You can know how to drive a car, but without knowing where you're going you roam pointlessly. This is the same way, you can learn techniques, but without moving in a certain direction you just wind up roaming. The problem is that even the very word "enlightenment" has certain ideas tied to it whether you dig deeply or not. I'm guessing that even if you haven't learned a lot about what enlightenment is/isn't you still have some ideas about it. The point of learning is simply to use the teachings as signposts without feeling the need to cling onto any of them in particular. Can you accomplish this on your own? Sure, especially because this work is the process of removing ideas rather than adding them, but some ideas can be helpful in the beginning. 

[FirstglimpseOMG]

Personally (heh heh), I did not read about enlightenment, or look specifically for enlightenment.

I was on a quest, but it was born of curiosity, and continued to be driven pretty purely by curiosity. It didn't seem like I was determined to find and 'understand' enlightenment. In fact the term was an abstract, rarely thought of, obscure term for me until AFTER my profound experience of waking up.

THEN I found that this word enlightenment, which had been around forever in different forms and languages, was an appropriate, widely used label, to slap on to my experience so I could talk about it with others within a conventional context. 

I found it might be compared to your first orgasm. You 're likely not bootin' around at 10 or 12 years old, thinking "Man, I've heard and I can sorta grasp that there's this awesome thing I can do with my body... I'm going to learn about it and study how to make this thing that I don't have a clue about happen." 

One day you just explore a little out of a fun and natural curiosity, maybe in the middle of a perfectly ordinary boring ol' day, or your good parts are leaned against the washing machine on spin cycle a little too long while you daydream and KABAAAM!!!

 

 

[Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj]

[Leo Gura]

On 8/1/2016 at 7:26 PM, electroBeam said:

@Leo Gura Why do you need to study the material? What advantages are there to hearing about dogma? I can understand learning techniques, but learning about enlightenment itself seems to me to have no place

Because your mind will otherwise totally delude you. You will never even understand what enlightenment is. It's nothing you can imagine, and you won't know that unless you study the shit out of this topic.

The only reason I haven't gotten lost so far is because I've literally researched 100s of perspectives. If you're not doing that, you basically haven't got a chance. You're gonna get deluded one way or another, and you will never even know it.

That is why I started doing psychedelics. Everything has to be considered and seriously investigated. No stone can be left unturned.

It's really a deep admission of ignorance. Which most people cannot humble themselves to do.

[cetus]

16 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That is why I started doing psychedelics. Everything has to be considered and seriously investigated. No stone can be left unturned.

@Leo Gura What the hell, I think I may give it a try once at some point. Totally by my own choice of course. Different perspectives can't hurt at all. There was a story that someone famous was visiting their guru in India. Maybe it was Ram Dass? Shit, I forgot. Anyway, he gave his guru a tab of acid. He took it and sat there for hours seemingly un-phased by the experience. Then he asked the guru hours later what he thought. He said "enlightenment came to India through meditation and spirituality. Enlightenment has now come to the west through the physical form of a chemical  because in the west, they are a civilization that relies on the physical ".

[Richard Alpert]

On ‎4‎.‎8‎.‎2016 at 5:32 PM, cetus56 said:

@Leo Gura What the hell, I think I may give it a try once at some point. Totally by my own choice of course. Different perspectives can't hurt at all. There was a story that someone famous was visiting their guru in India. Maybe it was Ram Dass? Shit, I forgot. Anyway, he gave his guru a tab of acid. He took it and sat there for hours seemingly un-phased by the experience. Then he asked the guru hours later what he thought. He said "enlightenment came to India through meditation and spirituality. Enlightenment has now come to the west through the physical form of a chemical  because in the west, they are a civilization that relies on the physical ".

I havent heard that quote, intresting. Ram Dass spoke about how he gave his guru 1200 milligrams of lsd (which is a huge dose) one time and nothing happened. Maharaji said on lsd things like: you can visit god temporarily, but then you come back. why not become god instead? And he said some weird shit like lsd can be useful if youre somewhere cold and turned toward to god. I have no idea why the cold, but i guess there was some point behind it.

[cetus]

@Richard Alpert I may be mistaken about it being Ram Dass who had said that. I heard this story years ago and understood there were other ways to reach higher levels of consciousness besides the use of drugs. It's one of the reasons I started meditation. Btw-your name sounds very familiar.

[cetus]

@Richard Alpert "LSD is like CHRIST in America which is awakening the young folk in Kali Yuga. America is most materialistic country. therefore God has shown his Avatar in the form of LSD (a material). They wanted a material for approaching God and they got it in the form of LSD" -Hari Dass Baba *Quoted from Ram Dass's book- Remember-Be Here Now

[Pav]

@cetus56 It is incorrect to say that America is a materialistic country. America is very anti-material. It is a highly abstractive culture. It is a culture which confuses money for actual wealth. One that rapes the planet to produce an ever increasing amount of junk which no body wants. The average American buys things for the power and prestige which they are perceived to represent, not because they love the material.

If America was a materialistic culture people would be buying only things only made from the finest materials by master craftsmen. They would sit on gold plated toilet seats. They would actually cherish and spend time enjoying their material. They would come home to have orgies with beautiful people. They would care about the material of the natural world. 

We don't find this. The average American consumes shoddy plastic junk which he/she never uses, and comes home to sit absorbed in a screen for hours on end. The American doesn't care for material.