Leo's Practical Guide To Enlightenment

[123456789]

@Leo Gura I can still feel it. And control it!

Edited March 20, 2017 by Lenny

[Leo Gura]

3 minutes ago, Lenny said:

@Leo Gura I can still feel it.  

Again, be very careful here. You can still FEEL something, but not "it". There is no "it". "It", meaning "body", is a conceptual construct which doesn't exist.

Also notice, that there is no direct connection between a body feeling and a body visual.

Also notice, that you say, "I can still feel it", which means you are not it. Because you are the feeler, not the feeling. So what is that "I"?

Also notice, when you're taking a nap, you don't feel your body.

[123456789]

On 20.12.2016 at 0:30 AM, Leo Gura said:

• Create an active sense of doubt that you are a human being or a physical object

How?  

[AlwaysBeNice]

@Leo Gura Are you sure you need to vape freebase?

edit: oh wrong thread

Edited March 22, 2017 by AlwaysBeNice

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, Lenny said:

How?  

What evidence is there that you are that human body?

None!

Take a close look at your direct experience. Your coffee table is as much you as your body. How else could you access the coffee table unless it was you? The body doesn't "perceive" anything. The body is perceived, it doesn't do any perceiving.

The body and the coffee table are both just perceptions which arise within the infinite empty field of awareness << which is the real you.

Ask yourself, how can one perception perceive another? Because that's what you're currently stuck on. You actually think the perception called "body" perceives all the other perceptions. But this is patently silly. Take an honest look at how your experience ACTUALLY works.

3 hours ago, AlwaysBeNice said:

@Leo Gura Are you sure you need to vape freebase?

This is not the thread for that discussion.

[Shin]

3 hours ago, Lenny said:

How?  

You know the feeling of a lucid dream, when you know it is a dream, but at the same time it appears very real ?

Well, It's the same thing you're experiencing right now, you just think it is real because it last longer, because your monkey mind tells you you have this kind of personality, and of course there is no magic shit going on.

If you dig deep enough, it's the same feeling, there is no difference, at all !

Edited March 21, 2017 by Shin

[Echoes]

@Leo Gura 

Quote

the infinite empty field of awareness

Can you elaborate on this please? I struggle with the "field" or "ocean of consciousness" aspect a lot lately and still came to no final satisfactory answer. What seperates our two experiences if no dimensions of any kind exist? If consciousness would be like a infinite empty field, wouldn't this imply a space-like dimension? But the here and now happens in a non-localizable consciousness, like a dream. So does your here and now. What is "between" the two 'here and now's" if we exclude solipsism?

Edited March 21, 2017 by Echoes

[Leo Gura]

@Echoes Of course you struggle with this. If you were aware of the infinite field, you would be enlightened, and you wouldn't have any questions.

Infinite empty awareness is not anything. No words can describe emptiness. Space-like is a metaphor. It's not exactly right, but similar.

There is no way to understand it without actually becoming it.

What's key here is that you make a distinction between all experiences on the one hand, and the field of infinite empty awareness on the other. The practice of self-inquiry is to DISCRIMINATE between the two. You have to constantly push back experience until you run up against the infinite empty field within which all experience take place.

You have to understand that emptiness is extremely subtle. Yet you are overwhelmed with gross experiences. You are MESMERIZED by experiences. It's all you basically know. You don't know how to look for anything else but more experience. So you have to slowly train your mind to focus on not-experience (whatever that is, you can't yet know).

[bobbyward]

one thing i find hard to understand is, teachers will tell you, you are emptiness nothingness, the perceiver that cant be perceived. 

but if it cant be perceived, how are they aware of it, and how are they able to tell you about it. 

[Leo Gura]

@bobbyward As I said above, make a distinction between perception/experience and Absolute Awareness.

Awareness is not perceived because it's what's doing perception. But you can BE it. You are it right now! You're just not aware that you're it. Because it's SUBTLE. It's not a material object like you're used to experiencing.

The nature of awareness is such that it is aware of itself. It's the only thing that's fundamental to reality. Everything else is modulation of awareness.

Instead of thinking of reality as made up of atoms or space/time or The Universe, think of reality as a cloud of empty awareness within which "stuff" is awared. That stuff is what we normally call "the universe". Even space and time are "stuff". Even existence is stuff. Everything is stuff except awareness.

[bobbyward]

On 2/24/2017 at 5:07 AM, Leo Gura said:

@khalifa It's not meditation.

It can morph into meditation when your self-inquiry gets very deep and so focused that the mind shuts off and you're just "sitting" right on top of matter. You're past verbal questions and answers, and your mind is honed in on the matter of who/what you are. Then you can just sit with one-pointed focus, waiting for the truth to hit you.

This is ideally where you want to work up to. The most powerful self-inquiry is non-verbal.

But when you start -- for perhaps many months -- there will be a lot of verbal questioning, confusion, and monkey-mind. That's okay. It's part of the process.

my understanding of this is, you want to focus on your non conceptual sense of being, the non conceptual sense of being is an object, but its the most subtle object there is. you are not the non conceptual sense of being, you are one step back from that, eventually when you become clear enough on the non conceptual sense of being you will see how that is being perceived. 

[Leo Gura]

The whole challenge here is: How can you grasp hold of something which is nothing? The mind cannot do it because the mind is a set of experiences. Every thought is an experience, and is something by definition. The mind needs to exhaust itself searching the haystack of experience before it finally realizes that it keeps looking in the wrong way. Mind is not up to this task. It must surrender itself.

[Loreena]

@Leo Gura how to surrender

[bobbyward]

@Loreena you cant surrender, because there is no you to surrender, surrender either happens or it doesnt.

its like in a dream, the dream character cant decide to cross the road because the dream character doesnt really exist, in the dream crossing the road either happens or it doesnt. 

I wouldnt advocate to stop practices though, I notice even though i intellectually know there is no one here, i cant stop seeking. 

[bobbyward]

I found these 4 videos very good, and related to what we are talking about here

 

[Leo Gura]

@Loreena By doing the work. Self-inquiry done long enough leads to surrender. You cannot shortcut the process. You cannot will the surrender (because there is no free will). You cannot fake the surrender.

As all worthwhile things, it takes work.

[123456789]

Leo, I am stuck. The problem is that I can see that I am not the body-mind but I still believe that I am the body-mind. I've tracked it down to 2 basic beliefs:

1) I am the body because I have control over it.

2) I am the mind because I have control over it. 

Now, I don't know how to deal with these two. It feels and looks like I in addition to being that which is conscious of the body-mind also have control of the body-mind (whenever it exists). Could you help me?

[Leo Gura]

@Lenny How can you say you have control when you cannot even locate yourself?

What is the thing which is in control? You have no idea.

You should really spend some time sitting down and observing this illusion of control. You clearly cannot control your thoughts. You cannot even control your own body.

Do you blink your eyes?

Do you pump your heart?

Do you breathe?

Do you move your legs when you walk?

Do you think?

Do you regenerate your own cells?

Do you replicate and transcribe your DNA?

No!

You have no control over anything. Even the thought, "But I have some control!" is not under your control.

See my vid called Free Will vs Determinism for more.

[Space]

@Lenny Realise that "the mind" is just a thought. What actually is this mind that you're talking about? Is it a collection of thoughts? Is it the brain (also a thought). Maybe it's neither of these, but look at whether you're answer is actually something in your direct experience, or whether it's just a thought/idea/concept. How could you be a thought? Is a thought aware of the feeling of your hand? Maybe you think that you 'use' the "mind", but again, what and where is this 'you' that is in control? Maybe the sense of being the 'user', the sense of being the do-er, is also just a thought? 

Open up to the possibility that your current experience right now is an experience of no-free will. 

[FirstglimpseOMG]

In response to the claim "But I decided to skip work today and attend this seminar!", many teachers say; "Oh yes, a decision was certainly made, it just wasn't you who made it."