Why give the enlightened experience more credibility than the standard experience?

[Blackhawk]

For example the enlightened experience is that the body isn't a separate self.

But the standard experience is that the body is a separate self.

In a survey with 10 million people where they can choose between:

• A.  I know beyond doubt that I'm a separate self. 
• B.  I know beyond doubt that I'm not a separate self.

99.9% of them would choose option A.

So it makes no sense to believe more in what the 0.1% say and take it as "The Ultimate Truth".

Basically, why are you people listening to supposedly enlightened people?

[Byun Sean]

don't give anything credibility.

 

Notice both stances are just beliefs.

 

Belief can't get you to Truth. Truth is absolute and you can't know it through the mind. You must go beyond the mind.

[Consilience]

Because when one follows the philosophical inquiry deeply enough, the logical holes in option A can be recognized. Further, when one studies the actuality of direct experience, the truth of option B reveals itself. And finally, when one observes the embodiment of wisdom, compassion, and presence of apparently enlightened individuals compared to the average person, the possibility that these people know something we don’t sets in.

These are a few reasons.

[Blackhawk]

1 minute ago, Byun Sean said:

don't give anything credibility.

 

Notice both stances are just beliefs.

 

Belief can't get you to Truth. Truth is absolute and you can't know it through the mind. You must go beyond the mind.

Ok so in this case you are kinda one of the "rare enlightened ones". Why should I listen to you?

My own experience is that I'm a separate self. So shouldn't I give that the most credibility?

[Thought Art]

Just now, Blackhawk said:

My own experience is that I'm a separate self. So shouldn't I give that the most credibility?

Is it?

[Blackhawk]

Just now, Thought Art said:

Is it?

Oh yes, 100%. I'm so freaking separate that it's unbelievable.

[Consilience]

2 minutes ago, Blackhawk said:

My own experience is that I'm a separate self. So shouldn't I give that the most credibility?

Experience interpreted through unconscious beliefs and fabrications gives rise to the appearance of this illusion. Look more carefully. Look for hours and hours and hours. Thousands of hours and this belief, along with many others, will fade. 
 

Good luck dude. 

[Byun Sean]

6 minutes ago, Blackhawk said:

Ok so in this case you are kinda one of the "rare enlightened ones". Why should I listen to you?

My own experience is that I'm a separate self. So shouldn't I give that the most credibility?

I'm not saying listen to me or believe me. If you believe me it won't help you because Truth is not a belief. If you disbelieve me you may

close yourself off to a possibility. 

Notice whatever side you take is still just a belief system.

 

The only one who holds ultimate authority on knowing what is true is you. 

 

 

In theory people can tell you many different ways of arriving at truth but you won't ever know for sure until you 

sort the wheat from the chaff in your direct experience and determine for yourself.

 

Notice appeals to authority are still you deciding but your projecting your own authority elsewhere.

Edited August 8, 2021 by Byun Sean

[Blackhawk]

10 minutes ago, Byun Sean said:

The only one who hold ultimate authority on knowing what is true is you. 

you won't ever know for sure until you sort the wheat from the chaff in your direct experience and determine for yourself.

Ok in that case that decides the matter: I'm a super separate self.

Edited August 8, 2021 by Blackhawk

[Blackhawk]

8 minutes ago, Consilience said:

Experience interpreted through unconscious beliefs and fabrications gives rise to the appearance of this illusion. Look more carefully. Look for hours and hours and hours. Thousands of hours and this belief, along with many others, will fade. 
 

Good luck dude. 

Ok but if you put so much effort in it, isn't it likely that you only managed to brainwash/reprogram yourself so that you are now seeing a illusion?

Because your natural, unaltered experience (your experience before the thousands of hours of struggle) was that you were a separate self.

Edited August 8, 2021 by Blackhawk

[Consilience]

1 minute ago, Blackhawk said:

Ok but if you put so much effort in it, isn't it likely that you only managed to brainwash/reprogram yourself so that you are now seeing a illusion?

Because your natural experience (your experience before the thousands of hours of struggle) was that you were a separate self.

How is paying attention to your moment by moment experience going to brain wash you? This is not about adding beliefs, ideologies, positions, or contexts. This is about removing those and looking at reality with a ‘naked’ lens.

 

See this is a classic trap of the ego. So sure if you think this work is about adding more to the mind, like religion, then yes the possibility for brain washing is there. But this work Im proposing is literally about paying attention at deeper and deeper levels, paying attention so deeply you see through your existential assumptions such as time or space.
 

Not to get too into the weeds but Ill point something out - a sense of self requires time to exist. You are only you relative to how you were a moment ago, and who you will be in another moment, and between these two conceptualizations of mind, a mirage of “me” appears. Yet when you’re paying so closely to your actual direct experience, ir can be observed that there is no such thing as past or future. When this illusion of past and future is EXPERIENCED not believed, part of the conceptual scaffolding holding a sense of self collapses. This is one of many mechanisms creating you though. 

More generally, imagine a smudged camera lens taking a picture vs. a lens that‘s just been cleaned. Which one will have a clearer view? Through spiritual practices such as meditation or contemplation, we are creating a mind capable of seeing more clearly. 
 

If you think you can trust the programming your parents, culture, and society handed to you growing up, there’s not much I can do for you. Perhaps noticing how miserable and dysfunctional everyone is could be an eye opener into the possibility no one really understands what’s going on. Perhaps not. 
 

 

[Byun Sean]

15 minutes ago, Blackhawk said:

Ok in that case that decides the matter: I'm a super separate self.

If thats what you want to believe that will be true for you.

[Blackhawk]

50 minutes ago, Consilience said:

How is paying attention to your moment by moment experience going to brain wash you? This is not about adding beliefs, ideologies, positions, or contexts. This is about removing those and looking at reality with a ‘naked’ lens.

 

See this is a classic trap of the ego. So sure if you think this work is about adding more to the mind, like religion, then yes the possibility for brain washing is there. But this work Im proposing is literally about paying attention at deeper and deeper levels, paying attention so deeply you see through your existential assumptions such as time or space.
 

Not to get too into the weeds but Ill point something out - a sense of self requires time to exist. You are only you relative to how you were a moment ago, and who you will be in another moment, and between these two conceptualizations of mind, a mirage of “me” appears. Yet when you’re paying so closely to your actual direct experience, ir can be observed that there is no such thing as past or future. When this illusion of past and future is EXPERIENCED not believed, part of the conceptual scaffolding holding a sense of self collapses. This is one of many mechanisms creating you though. 

More generally, imagine a smudged camera lens taking a picture vs. a lens that‘s just been cleaned. Which one will have a clearer view? Through spiritual practices such as meditation or contemplation, we are creating a mind capable of seeing more clearly. 
 

If you think you can trust the programming your parents, culture, and society handed to you growing up, there’s not much I can do for you. Perhaps noticing how miserable and dysfunctional everyone is could be an eye opener into the possibility no one really understands what’s going on. Perhaps not. 

But also paying attention is something which is taught.

And paying attention for thousands of hours could make you hallucinate unreal things. For example some people hallucinate stuff in sensory deprivation tanks. There's nothing added in sensory deprivation tanks, only removed. Yet they start hallucinating unreal things.

[Flowerfaeiry]

@Blackhawk some people don't give a fuck about enlightenment 

[Consilience]

@Blackhawk You’re grasping man. You either see the wisdom in what Im proposing or you don’t. Given that you’re evening asking these questions, it’s obvious there’s some part of you that resonates with what this work presents as a possibility. Trust that curiosity, in this life or another. Namaste ?

[taotemu]

@Blackhawk  By all means don't take anyone's word for it.  Don't believe anyone's experience.  Anyone claiming to be enlightened is probably trying to sell you something.  Stay skeptical. 

If you are interested, check it out for yourself.  If not, don't waste your time.  Just move on and go about your life.  99.9% of people simply aren't even interested and would rather just accept reality as they see it without question.    

[Leo Gura]

Enlightenment is NOT an experience. It is Absolute Truth.

You have no idea what that is. You've never encountered that in your life. All your ideas about what it is are wrong.

Absolute Truth has nothing to do with listening to enlightened people. It doesn't matter what every person on the planet said or believed or experienced, Absolute Truth would still be absolutely true.

[Blackhawk]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

Enlightenment is NOT an experience. It is Absolute Truth.

You have no idea what that is. You've never encountered that in yout life. All your ideas about what it is are wrong.

I think this is the first time you say that enlightenment isn't a experience. I could be wrong though. But anyway, it's just good that you don't use the same words all the time.

[The0Self]

Because generally, the standard experience is one of thinking that something is lacking, when in reality nothing is lacking. But the question is malformed since enlightenment is not an experience. It’s the lack of the experience of real separation — that something really matters or that something is really wrong; missing; lacking, or that some circumstance is known with certainty, or that there are actually inherently existing separate objects and beings.

 

49 minutes ago, Blackhawk said:

I think this is the first time you say that enlightenment isn't a experience. I could be wrong though. But anyway, it's just good that you don't use the same words all the time.

It’s not an experience, but it is technically a state — just not a state that “someone is in.”

Edited August 8, 2021 by The0Self

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Blackhawk said:

I think this is the first time you say that enlightenment isn't a experience. I could be wrong though. But anyway, it's just good that you don't use the same words all the time.

"Experience" is a metaphysically loaded, dualistic, materialistic, egoic notion.

I have explained this plenty of times, especially in my episodes: What Is Perception? and What Is Truth?