Maybe not all people can awaken, no Matter how hard they try.

[Inliytened1]

24 minutes ago, Mason Riggle said:

Do I have to 'try' to stop trying?   Do you see the paradox here? 

 

Sure but why is paradox a problem.. we can and will encounter paradox all over the place.   I'm simply stating that awakening has to come without thinking too hard about it.  Like when you ride a bike you are not thinking about how you are working the pedals..if you did you would probably get in your own way...rather you are just being.  

[Nahm]

@Proserpina

To keep said beliefs, requires justifying them with more beliefs, like “you won’t see”. You assume what I see, if in fact I do at all. 

[Proserpina]

@Nahm Fine I'll let go of it.  I prefer Being to silly beliefs anyway.  I put intellect,  reading and philosophy in my vortex instead. 

Edited October 4, 2021 by Proserpina

[gettoefl]

2 hours ago, Proserpina said:

Exactly.

And maybe one day I can have that fancy realization and I'll be with the beloved all along the way. 

yes same am yet to get a single lick, keep going and you will get the mother lode

[Diogenes]

I think the most important thing is not meditation or psychedelics. Most people simply have no intelligence of their own.

By intelligence, I don’t mean intellect or anything genetic. I just mean that you are learning from yourself throughout life, not learning from others. Every time you read a book or watch a video, you are learning from others. If you read all the books in the world, it’s still other people’s intelligence, not your own. You can live your life in complete solitude and still rely 100% on the intelligence of others. 

If I just go to the Zen temple and do whatever the master says, I’ll never get there, because I’m just a mindless NPC. The wheels must be turning inside me, not simply following instructions.

Until I know the truth, I don’t know the truth. I don’t know I am god or that Zen, Advaita, meditation, Leo or anybody else is correct. For the unenlightened, EVERYTHING is just blind beliefs and dogma. 

A genuine truth seeker doesn’t already have a conclusion he’s trying to reach. A genuine truth seeker is not seeking enlightenment, he has no idea about enlightenment, he’s only seeking truth, whatever it may be. 

The most helpful thing to learn from Leo’s videos is not remembering all his conclusions but seeing how his mind works, courageously deconstructing everything and taking all implications to its furthest end. You never need to learn anyone’s wisdom. When you are wise, you will have the same wisdom. Everybody in the world you’ve ever talked to since the day you were born has only confused you, including all teachers and Leo too.

The problem is, we’ve been taught to ask questions outwardly and learn about life from other people. 

“Only an idiot gives advice. Only an idiot takes advice.” - OSHO

Edited October 4, 2021 by Diogenes

[The0Self]

If awakening is the falling away of the separate individual or rather the recognition that it never was real, how can the separate individual ever awaken? There never was one. It's an appearance. And it will never be known when it falls away, first of all because it's already not real, but when its nature is seen, there's obviously no one left to know whether they're awake or not.

I can only imagine y'all must assume awakening is knowable, in which case you're talking about something entirely different, such as a state in which an apparent one is untouched by what arises -- that state can apparently arise, but it's not the liberation often referred to, because that's already all there is.

Edited October 4, 2021 by The0Self

[Mason Riggle]

@The0Self nice.  

In relative terms, however... an organism can become aware of it's own thoughts, and recognize that what it mistakes to be a 'thinker of thoughts' hiding somewhere inside itself (a self, or a soul) is just more thoughts arising.   There isn't a 'thinker of thoughts' inside of a brain any more than there is a 'grower of hair' inside a brain.. (or think of a tree, with a separate 'grower of leaves' inside the tree telling the tree what leaves to grow.. there isn't one. Trees are happening.. leaves are growing). Thoughts are arising.. Hair is growing.. 

It's all happening and no one is doing it.. this is a thought that can arise which can dispel the myth of a 'separate self' who 'does things'. This is how egos die. 

Edited October 4, 2021 by Mason Riggle

[Carl-Richard]

The more inclined you are towards having mystical experiences, the more inclined you are to meditate, because having early mystical experiences gives you more motivation to meditate, which leads to a lesser feeling of effort while also putting in a lot of work. So it creates a kind of split distribution where it's mostly awakened people who speak about the amazing benefits of meditation, and it creates a breakdown in communication for the average seeker.

The seeker in the middle of the distribution (the average seeker), who lacks the intense internal motivation of the natural-born mystic, underestimates the level of work that goes into meditation, and they feel let down by the lack of carrots, and they're more likely to give up early. The majority of the people who're not awake never took up meditation to begin with, but those numbers also contribute to the low amount of awakened people in the population, so the average seeker is then forced to conclude that awakening is largely nature over nurture.

However, what is often overlooked is that the natural-born mystic had to meditate thousands of hours for them to realize their full potential. What if an average seeker decided to put in the same amount of hours? Who is to say they wouldn't see drastic results? How can you make conclusions about something you most likely haven't tried yet?