How Many People Are Enlightened?

[VeganAwake]

I guess I would consider myself enlightened and the easiest way for me to explain it is it's not something you gain.... it's a falling away of who you thought you were  and the realization of true self. Which by the way feels like nothing and everything at the same time kind of hard to explain. Judgment becomes pointless because you know they are just conditioned thought patterns. I look at things as they are and of course sometimes my mind tries to jump in and call it something else but I tend to just let that fall away and see it for what it is. The saying "it is what it is" Rings true with enlightenment. To me Enlightenment is simply the Truth realized in all aspects of existence. It's not necessarily that your ego dissolves or goes anywhere ...I can just choose not to listen to it, or I can play some Divine game of Lila and listen to it... it just depends on what I choose to do. It's honestly not what most people think, sometimes I feel like my brain is completely rewired and it has been happening to me gradually over about a two-year span so far with multiple and different size Awakenings throughout. There are no prerequisites but I will say a lot of meditation helps with the shift. Thank you for allowing me to share and peace be with you all!!

[Aakash]

57 minutes ago, VeganAwake said:

To me Enlightenment is simply the Truth realized in all aspects of existence.

thats a bald claim my friend, (he said in a curious excited tone)

Could you break down what you mean further? 

 i would be interest to see how someone else apart from leo, dissects reality  

absolute infinity is very hard to dissect accurately, so i'm just interested in the aspects of reality you've realised for yourself

i doubt the masters of the past had realised it all, vocabulary and language play a huge part in expressing. 

some realised the absolute, but not all of them knew absolute infinity , they each had partial knowledge about it 

in the end, they were humans being perceptive just like we are doing now, but who knows. If you got beings finding 114 chakras lol who knows what that even means for the spread in absolute infinity that we can access as humans. it could potentially be all of them to be honest, now i think of it lol.. but what does that even mean 114 chakras lol just sounds like an amazing feat for someone to reach when we only found 7 

Edited September 13, 2019 by Aakash

[Kensho]

https://www.poehm.com/en/list-of-enlightened-people/

Here are some examples with interesting background stories. Some are controversial

 

Edited September 13, 2019 by Kensho

[ActualizedDavid]

I see that alot of people have awakening moments and realizations.

But i think someone who is stable in that non-dual understanding and living that life. that you can call awake. If you can stay awake.

 

[Tistepiste]

@VeganAwake Do you experience peace,love, bliss as feelings? Constant that is

Edited September 14, 2019 by Tistepiste

[traveler]

I am enlightened

[Aakash]

@traveler what did you focus on to get enlightened ? 

[MAYA EL]

I am not enlightened that is a title connected to a fad.

I have found understanding and continue to search for more understanding.

[astrokeen]

@Genghis Khan I think if the thread title had been "who has experienced non-duality", things would have been clearer as to what was being referred to.

Actualized David states it well: 

"I think someone who is stable in that non-dual understanding and living that life. that you can call awake. If you can stay awake."

 

Edited September 14, 2019 by astrokeen

[VeganAwake]

@Aakash My experience has been almost identical to a movie that I found on YouTube called Samadhi part 1 & 2 .....its good and its the truth. Here is a tiny clip from that movie:

People who are engaged in religious or spiritual practices such as yoga prayer meditation chanting or any kind of ritual are practicing techniques which are conditioned, which means they are just part of the ego construct, the seeking and the activity isn't the problem, thinking you have found the answer in some external form is the problem spirituality in its most common form is no different than pathological thinking that is going on everywhere, it is further agitation of the Mind more human doing as opposed to human being. The ego construct wants more money more power more love more of everything. Those on the so-called spiritual path desire to be more spiritual more awake more equanimous more peaceful more enlightened. Samadhi is not about attaining or adding something more to yourself, its to die before you die. 

 

[Aakash]

@VeganAwake Interesting, so what practice did you do? 

[VeganAwake]

@Tistepiste

I wanted to pass along something that I realized. This information was my path/technique that is very difficult for people to grasp and yet its also very easy, it really depends on each individual. 

 

The biggest road block to attaining samadhi is thinking that one already has. "The biggest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge"... simply put, if a person thinks they already have the answer, there's no need to seek it any longer. This can be the show stopper. 

 

In samadhi there is a saying... "No person can enter the gateless gate, So be nobody". This can be the hard part for some people, because it requires a "letting go" of ones sense of self, and all belief systems/structures a person is identified with and attached to, including all religious and culturally conditioned notions of the self. Simply put you drop your entire identity, and belief you have about yourself, and become like a young child new to the world and ready to learn.( come with your glass empty); ( become the not knower)

 

This is of course where the ego feels the most threatened, because it knows that this will kill it. It will try to resist it in every way possible( mostly distractions). The trick is not to force it, but to ask it to sit down in the chair and that you no longer require its services.

 

The letting go I'm describing also means to drop any past signs or beliefs of who or what you think you are. For example do not cling to nicknames, signs, or old beliefs about yourself that you have already used in your journey forward. The signs are there to point you 2 something, but do not cling and hang on to them to long. They are meant to be used and then transcended/outgrown and dropped( non-attachment/ non identification).

 

Basically these were the hardest things for me to do in my own life, but once I caught on to this and trusted my own instincts, my motivation allowed me to completely drop everything, become the not knower, and dive into the abyss. 

 

This path for me has been an awakening in its self, but I can see its a definite permanent lifestyle shift as well. 

[VeganAwake]

@Aakash  About two and a half years ago I realized almost everything I thought I knew about diet and nutrition was more of a perspective or conditioned thought process than the actual Truth. I went vegan overnight and it was such a quick and radical paradigm shift that something in me Awoke.

After that it started off as searching for ultimate truth, surrendering(letting go)and simultaneously knowing that I would never give up until I reached it. I had to replace fear with trust and motivation and dive deep into the murky waters of the unknown while staying grounded and balanced. I had to completely empty my glass, stay radically open minded and maintain razor sharp focus to sort out the TRUTH from the nothingness. I dropped everything I thought I knew about anything and became a child willing and ready to learn. I also knew I was wasting energy holding on to past grudges and not completely forgiving everything and everyone including myself, forgive them for they know not what they do. I had to patch those holes to keep the energy from escaping, so I could use it in forward progression and to peel off the layers. Meditation was key for learning to stay present and aware and helped me gently set my ego in a chair with its nose in the corner and tell it thank you, but I will no longer be requiring your services. In other words I mortally wounded it. Big picture thinking was also important on this journey, the biggest picture I could possibly imagine in every question I had. I prayed for awakening( even though at the time I didn't realize it was already happening) and asked to be shown everything. There are many other things I came to understand such as: taking the middle path, non-attachment, non judgement, non identification, non-duality, cultural conditioning and its influence, collective ego, spiral dynamics, understanding religions stemmed from spirituality. Sorry this was so long I thought you might be interested.

[VeganAwake]

@Aakash  I truly don't believe there are any prerequisites to Samadhi/awakening/enlightenment.

But in a nutshell here is what was key to my experience:

1) a radical paradigm shift.

2) putting the desire to know the truth as my top priority in life, and simultaneously letting go of everything I thought I believed to be true or in other words emptying my glass and becoming like a child another name would be "no mind"

3) reading Eckhart Tolle The Power of Now.

4) practicing meditation for at least 15 minutes a day

5) stumbling onto Leo's actualized.org and watching the collective ego video along with everything else.

[MuddyBoots]

 

24 minutes ago, VeganAwake said:

People who are engaged in religious or spiritual practices such as yoga prayer meditation chanting or any kind of ritual are practicing techniques which are conditioned, which means they are just part of the ego construct, the seeking and the activity isn't the problem, thinking you have found the answer in some external form is the problem spirituality in its most common form is no different than pathological thinking that is going on everywhere, it is further agitation of the Mind more human doing as opposed to human being. The ego construct wants more money more power more love more of everything. Those on the so-called spiritual path desire to be more spiritual more awake more equanimous more peaceful more enlightened. Samadhi is not about attaining or adding something more to yourself, its to die before you die. 

Whilst I agree with the gist of this, it is a counsel of perfection. Conditioning is the position of the newcomer to spirituality, the state from which we need to bootstrap ourselves out of. As you say, everything which us unenlightened beings are doing is conditioned to some extent (myself included) not just spiritual practice. William Blake said that if the fool persists in his folly he will become wise: if we can do our yoga, meditation etc mindfully then we may start to see the conditioning and ego games. We can then come to a crisis point where we realise the hypocrisy of our spiritual ambitions hereto, and from this crisis may just break out of this trap.
 

8 minutes ago, VeganAwake said:

@Tistepiste

This is of course where the ego feels the most threatened, because it knows that this will kill it. It will try to resist it in every way possible( mostly distractions). The trick is not to force it, but to ask it to sit down in the chair and that you no longer require its services.

I like most of what you say but find this part hard to understand. It could be just the limitations of language, but seems to be giving  the ego some sort of actual existence. On the other hand, if the ego is an illusion then this is just the mind playing tricks on itself. To ask us unenlightened people to start talking to our ego is likely to end up with the ego talking to itself, or even to think there's another little 'me' behind my ego   

[Aakash]

26 minutes ago, VeganAwake said:

I truly don't believe there are any prerequisites to Samadhi/awakening/enlightenment.

There aren't, but you still had to choose an action, so the question still has meaning... what did you meditate on/ focus on ? 

[VeganAwake]

40 minutes ago, MuddyBoots said:

 

Whilst I agree with the gist of this, it is a counsel of perfection. Conditioning is the position of the newcomer to spirituality, the state from which we need to bootstrap ourselves out of. As you say, everything which us unenlightened beings are doing is conditioned to some extent (myself included) not just spiritual practice. William Blake said that if the fool persists in his folly he will become wise: if we can do our yoga, meditation etc mindfully then we may start to see the conditioning and ego games. We can then come to a crisis point where we realise the hypocrisy of our spiritual ambitions hereto, and from this crisis may just break out of this trap.
 

I like most of what you say but find this part hard to understand. It could be just the limitations of language, but seems to be giving  the ego some sort of actual existence. On the other hand, if the ego is an illusion then this is just the mind playing tricks on itself. To ask us unenlightened people to start talking to our ego is likely to end up with the ego talking to itself, or even to think there's another little 'me' behind my ego   

@Aakash @MuddyBoots 

The Samadhi video really covers this topic well but here is my take...

The Ego construct is a dysfunctional survival mechanism and is real. It's what the ego believes and perceives that is the illusion. For example the ego tries to make you believe you are a limited separate self from existence, when the truth is you are existence and its entirety.

[Aakash]

@VeganAwake thank you for your replies  

[VeganAwake]

@Aakash you're very welcome. I did not meditate or focus on anything in particular just allow your thought process to be. During meditation if something arises just notice it and let it fall away naturally. Remember this process is a falling away not an attaining. Once you let all the layers of your false self drop away, you will realize your true self was there all along and you just couldn't see it clearly through the veil of Illusion.

[MuddyBoots]

2 hours ago, VeganAwake said:

@Aakash @MuddyBoots

 

The Ego construct is ... and is real.

Wikipedia: 

A construct in the philosophy of science is an ideal object, where the existence of the thing may be said to depend upon a subject's mind. This contrasts with a real object, where existence does not seem to depend on the existence of a mind.[1]

This isn't an attempt to get into an intellectual debate, but rather to say I'm at the verge of giving up on the ideas of 'real', 'reality', 'imaginary', they confuse me more than help clarify anything! 

 

2 hours ago, VeganAwake said:

@Aakash @MuddyBoots 

 For example the ego tries to make you believe you are a limited separate self from existence, when the truth is you are existence and its entirety.

Maybe this is this the language problem again, but this seems to say that the entirety of existence is being conned by a small construct which it itself has created. I think I'm lacking a decent philosophy of mind. But then, you claim you are enlightened and I claim I'm not. So that entirety is divided between our two minds, isn't it? I'm trying to fully appreciate this distinction between Difference and Separation. We're saying that Being has differences, an infinity of features, such as your mind and mine, but none are separate. We communicate, influence each other, over time there is a flowing through of features into each other because the boundaries are porous and unfixed, Yet we view life as a series of fixed snapshots where the differences appear separate. This could be the survival strategy you mention VeganAwake, although I'm not quite sure whether it's really dysfunctional, if it's objective is survival and reproduction of the human organism. But it does cause suffering along the way. 

Edited September 15, 2019 by MuddyBoots