Solitary Gurus

[LastThursday]

Sometimes I get strange thoughts. I've noticed a trend in so called enlightened gurus or masters that they come in ones. They always seem to be lone wolves. Why is that? If the ego is gone in these people, then what's to stop them inhabiting more than one body? Are there any cases of dual gurus, say one enlightened "entity" spread over two or more people? Why the attachment to a singular body acting like a guru? Or am I being ridiculous?

[Mason Riggle]

@LastThursday My wife teaches lessons that I don't know. I teach lessons my wife doesn't know. Hopefully our children will know more than either of us. 

Edited April 9, 2021 by Mason Riggle

[LastThursday]

@Mason Riggle ha! Maybe gurus are not solitary, it's just my blinkered perspective? I have confused the physical body with the teachings? The singular bodies are conduits for Truth.

Edited April 9, 2021 by LastThursday

[JohnD]

As soon the lead is decentralized it's no longer attributed to an individual. If 4 people ran actualized.org, Leo wouldn't be in the position he's in.

[Someone here]

Me and Leo. 

[Mason Riggle]

"If you really understand Zen. You can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because... the sound of the rain needs no translation." - Alan Watts

[LastThursday]

2 minutes ago, JohnD said:

As soon the lead is decentralized it's no longer attributed to an individual. If 4 people ran actualized.org, Leo wouldn't be in the position he's in.

True, but he also wouldn't care being egoless and all.

[Mason Riggle]

Recognizing that the 'ego' is just thought, doesn't stop an organism from behaving like that organism.. it just realized there isn't some 'other separate self' somewhere within itself, 'doing' what it does. 

[LastThursday]

@Mason Riggle so the organism still has a circumscribed boundary? I mean, there's no organism level equivalent of enlightenment? Or is it the ego that thinks there's an organism? I feel vertigo coming on.

[Mason Riggle]

@LastThursday who are you asking?

Are you the organism "LastThursday" asking the organism "Mason Riggle"? 

Or you are 'Consciousness', thinking there are organisms, so it can ask itself? 

Does it matter which it is? 

 

Edited April 9, 2021 by Mason Riggle

[LastThursday]

@Mason Riggle I actually have no idea. Hang on... Is my ego = my organism? Nope. I've been told my ego can disappear. But. Does "my" organism disappear with it? If there is no ego to disambiguate any sense of locality, then how can there be separate organisms? You and I are indistinguishable in that case. We are a singular system, like question water sloshing around in a bucket of @Mason Riggle / @LastThursday.

[Mason Riggle]

@LastThursday Typically, the 'ego' is this notion of some 'separate self' that exists somewhere.. 

The ego doesn't really 'disappear', because it was never there... 'notions of there being an ego' occur sometimes.. and sometimes not. 

[Mason Riggle]

The separation between 'self' and 'that which is not self' is imaginary..  where are 'you'? Inside your organism somewhere?

Are you your organism? All of it? If you remove your hand, don't 'you' remain?.. so 'you' are not your hand.  What part of your organism is 'you'?  Your brain? What part of your brain? All of it?

Well.. there is no boundary to say.. 'I' am just as much 'my body' and 'my hand' as I am 'my shoe', or the sounds I'm hearing, or the things I'm seeing.

"I have no other self, than the totality of that which I am aware." - Alan Watts. 

[LastThursday]

@Mason Riggle I think that's why I sneakily asked the question about singular/dual gurus originally. "I" could just as well stop using my voice and let the other "me"s do the talking it would make no difference. Or let "my" cat do the teaching. 

[Mason Riggle]

@LastThursday

"You find out that the universe is a system that creeps up on itself and says 'Boo' and then laughs at itself for jumping." -Alan Watts

????

[JohnD]

1 hour ago, LastThursday said:

True, but he also wouldn't care being egoless and all.

Yes, but you're asking about systems with multiple gurus at the center. Something new emerges and takes the center, so those kind of people you're asking about exist, they're just not seen as gurus because your attention isn't drawn directly to them.

I think the pervasiveness of ego is missed by many in this field. Ego evolves. Everything in the world of duality can be coopted by the ego. One can experience expansive states of consciousness, can contain and direct enormous vision and focus, and still use these in a way that serves the ego. If the ego didn't hide from itself, it wouldn't persist.

Ego is also a collective aspect of our unitive consciousness that is moving towards integration. We need more conscious people on the ground, people that understand the inner-workings of the ego and don't take a dismissive perspective. Without this awareness we can't help to untangle the collective mess we find ourselves in.

[LastThursday]

1 hour ago, JohnD said:

the inner-workings of the ego

I don't know either way, but does the ego have inner workings? Or to put it another way, is there commonality between the multitude of egos inhabiting bodies? Three things already come to mind I suppose:

• The need for ownership
• The need for love
• The need for identification

I don't know if I would add "need" itself to that list, because that would seem to be there even without ego, but I could be wrong.

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, LastThursday said:

say one enlightened "entity" spread over two or more people?

What nonsense is this?

An enlightened entity is infinitely spread over the whole Universe.

There are no multiple entities. There is only YOU -- God.

When you fully awaken you become everyone and everything.

[Phrenic]

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

What nonsense is this?

An enlightened entity is infinitely spread over the whole Universe.

There are no multiple entities. There is only YOU -- God.

When you fully awaken you become everyone and everything.

Life can be experienced from various dimensions, whether those dimensions are illusive or not

It is a trickery of language to pretend that other dimensions of energy and deities and so on do not exist, they do exist in the practically relevant sense that your physical body exists, and are therefore a relevant aspect of life

You cannot apply higher modes of consciousness to yourself and every single problem that exists in the world, that is not a practical or scientific approach, the illusion has to be purified from varying levels to be dealt with from its various existing levels

Not all people are willing to transcend the illusion of life in this manner, in the same way that the Buddha failed to transform the world's population into monks, life as it exists is a multi-faceted illusion and has to be approached as such

[JohnD]

@LastThursday The work we're doing can be described as juxtaposing the relative and absolute and integrating these. Egoless perspective is necessary, but losing the ego is losing the relative world, and therefore your ability to act in and influence it.

I'll use a metaphor. Let's say a plane's navigation system knows where to take it, you just punch in the coordinates and it flies there. Now say the navigation becomes so advanced that it simply instructs the plane to move from the original location to the destination. The plane can't do this because it doesn't have the instructions to take off, balance, make adjustments, and land. It's like the navigation system doesn't know it's navigating a plane and just wants to be at the location immediately.

Now say the navigation system is well connected to the rest of the plane. It knows where it wants to go, and knows how to get the plane there. It's communicating with all the sensors on the plane, the engines, wing flaps, everything that makes a plane fly moment to moment. It knows the entire route but also the situational adjustments that need to be made along the way.

The plane is the ego, the destination is reunification.