You Can Not Do Anything To Wake Up

[Dhana Choko]

"In order to find what you are looking for, you need to stop searching."

I thought it was very funny to start a conversation about this on this self-actualization forum.  I would like to hear your thoughts about this idea that you cannot do anything to wake up or nothing you do actually contributes anything to your true Awareness.  

Please tell me what this idea wakes up in you. Emotions, thoughts, feelings, beliefs.

[theinevitableandi]

This comes to mind.... You can't find what you are looking for because what you are looking for is looking for itself. Then you realize that you cannot find yourself because there is no self. .. after that crickets..

 

;p 

 

 

[Pierre]

Yes, this is THE question...See Lisa Cairns's interview under "Lists of great enlightened teachers", she makes it pretty clear.

 

[Azrael]

33 minutes ago, Dhana Choko said:

"In order to find what you are looking for, you need to stop searching."

For me basically that means that to wake up I need to completely surrender to spontaneity. And you can't be spontaneous when trying to be it because that contradicts the actual state.

I can really see beauty in this dilemma, because when I started to realize that a lot of pain of not seeing through the illusion right now just went away. I'm pretty okay with what is. When I meditate, I meditate. When I think about enlightenment, I do that. When I play my game, that's all right. I just do thing after thing after thing. Even when I resist, I let myself resist and try to really see the essence of resistance.

Because all that you can do, is being spontaneous. And to see this I just start to live it every day and stop seeking. The rest comes when it is time to come. Took a good year of very intensive seeking and feeling unhappy of not being enlightened to begin to see that, however.

[Ayla]

1 hour ago, pete said:

This comes to mind.... You can't find what you are looking for because what you are looking for is looking for itself. Then you realize that you cannot find yourself because there is no self. .. after that crickets..

 

;p 

 

 

Also, because you are already your own self. 

The only thing you know for sure, is that somehow...you exist. 

[Ramu]

1 hour ago, Dhana Choko said:

"In order to find what you are looking for, you need to stop searching."

I thought it was very funny to start a conversation about this on this self-actualization forum.  I would like to hear your thoughts about this idea that you cannot do anything to wake up or nothing you do actually contributes anything to your true Awareness.  

Please tell me what this idea wakes up in you. Emotions, thoughts, feelings, beliefs.

Its like the Alan Watts lecture, You are the very thing you Seek.  If one is looking for consciousness, essentially it means consciousness is looking for itself.  Like a dog chasing its tail??  I thing the breakthrough comes when ordinary Joes like me get a peek behind the curtain without ever having the intention of peeking behind anything!  When as an undergraduate studying Psychology I was a hard core reductionist and used to scoff at spirituality as mere Fluff.  I then started experiencing synchronicities.  Now 20 years later I do realize I AM.  In other words awakening happened to me.  I didn't ever intend to find it.

[NariusV]

I'll post an alternative view. Another way to proceed is to keep searching, and in addition, let go of whatever you become aware of, noting that anything within awareness is a movement within consicousness and not the 'self' which perceives it. Letting go of even that self, since it is also a movement in awareness, an object within attention, that of couse cannot be the self either. This is the active method, of stopping searching through the act of searching.

Edited February 11, 2016 by NariusV

[Walter B]

7 hours ago, Dhana Choko said:

"In order to find what you are looking for, you need to stop searching."

I thought it was very funny to start a conversation about this on this self-actualization forum.  I would like to hear your thoughts about this idea that you cannot do anything to wake up or nothing you do actually contributes anything to your true Awareness.  

Please tell me what this idea wakes up in you. Emotions, thoughts, feelings, beliefs.

Kind of, as in I "remember when". It gives me the emotions of calm and patience.  Thoughts of priority. Feelings of disdain for letting myself be overwritten, when it happens. Beliefs that belief belongs to things one sees or knows in the present.

However, in this it should be realized that many people prey on others. Expecting that their "overwrite" or influence will stick as a parent does a child. This all to often becomes an expectation in adulthood. Parents seem to exhibit it the most. Particularly older women. This is a mechanism of control. Frankly, it pisses off adults when that are treated this way. I don't say much after treated this way by anyone. But some people have honed the art of influence and control and can be quite sneaky. But, nonetheless they are simply misleading themselves believing any aware person would like subjecting themselves to that, even for a short time. It'll make them cry when they are told they can "think it all they want and that doesn't make it so". Lol. It surprised me the first time I witnessed the response. Denial is prevalent in some.

Edited February 12, 2016 by Elemental
Content

[Leo Gura]

There is one very important thing you can do, which is to sit regularly and cut out all the distractions in your life that keep you from contemplating your own existence.

Just as in poker, you can't control if you will win the hand, but you can certainly improve your odds a lot.

[bobbyward]

the thing is as long as you believe and or feel that you are a separate self, EVERYTHING you do is seeking. everything you do is about making yourself happy, its impossible for a separate self to not seek happiness. 

if you believe and or feel you are a separate self, spiritual seeking doesnt make you any more or less of a seeker. 

[Dhana Choko]

45 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

There is one very important thing you can do, which is to sit regularly and cut out all the distractions in your life that keep you from contemplating your own existence.

Just as in poker, you can't control if you will win the hand, but you can certainly improve your odds a lot.

This is something that I used to think and what I still think. However, I am contemplating that maybe I need to let go of this idea as well. My ego has been and is so tangled up in trying to "wake up" and trying to "find that missing piece" and "doing what ever I can to wake up" and I am wondering if this very thing is the one thing I need to let go of, because it scares me a lot! It makes me very scared to think that I would not meditate on one day or I might "miss" something or "hinder" my growth. Then again I have read multiple books by people who have just woken up. They have not done anything to make it happen and there they are, just an Awareness looking at everything. If one could affect this only at their free will, this type of phenomenon would simply not happen. 

I think it is something to think about and I actually think it can take to another level - to be able to let go of the trying.

[Leo Gura]

@Dhana Choko Well, you can also read books about people who've won the lottery. Doesn't make it a wise strategy if you care about increasing your wallet.

People who are seriously enlightened have one thing in common: they all invested 1000s of hours sitting. It's silly to assume you can avoid that.

There is WAY more to enlightenment than just getting enlightened. So your time will be well-invested. The real work only begins with enlightenment, lol. There are at least 8 different types of enlightenment to be had.

Zen masters who meditate for 8 hours a day for 80 years still report new discoveries and insights. It basically never ends.

[Juan Cruz Giusto]

@Leo Gura Why do you say that after enlightenment the real work begins? Which types of enlightenments exists?

[Leo Gura]

1 minute ago, jcgiusto said:

@Leo Gura Why do you say that after enlightenment the real work begins? Which types of enlightenments exists?

I'll talk about this in a video. Enlightenment is what allows you to start doing true self-mastery work, because for the first time in your life you realize what the Self is. The ego-mind rarely dies after enlightenment. The mind is so strong it sticks around for decades after, requiring much work to disassemble.

I'll talk about the various types of enlightenment in a video too. These are very deep topics and not easy to discuss.

[Juan Cruz Giusto]

@Leo Gura Fucking amazed by this topic! Looking forward to it!

[aurum]

It's an oversimplification IMO about enlightenment. But it does point to a certain truth that essentially enlightenment is your natural state, if only you could stop seeking.

[Guest]

"One can seek enlightenment by practicing meditation, but how should we practice so that we can attain enlightenment?  Total and complete enlightenment is not attained easily.  one must develop small moments of insight and understanding each day.  These small, daily bits of enlightenment accumulate over time, until they culminate in a sudden flash of great enlightenment." Ven. Master Hsing Yun

Stopping the "searching" maybe one aspect of it, but its undoubtedly not all of it..One cannot search for something which they do not know yet anyway. It just becomes a meaningless desire, if you get what I mean...

Edited February 12, 2016 by tryingforfreedom

[zenny]

Edited February 12, 2016 by zenny

[Ayla]

I think we are talking here about two different things: 

One is what is usually referred to as AWAKENING - this is what @Dhana Choko and I are talking about. What @Leo Gura is talking about is the life-long journey on the enlightenment path. 

I think that, if the awakening experience was powerful enough, the enlightenment work will be much easier to sustain, because the "center point" would have shifted enough so that you cannot go back to old you. This will spread naturally over your life, and everything will seem easy and pleasant. Your core will be in a different state than before. 

If awakening is something that comes to you as a yearning and is pursued just emotionally and mentally, then yes, there is a lot of work to be done. In this context, the first step is to embrace the fact that Mind is not you, but just a TOOL that will help you undo your own mind. (using a thorn to get out a thorn in your foot, then throwing them both away)... and this is what Leo is trying to convey through his videos. The trap people fall into, is that they do not understand it as a TOOL, but as yet another philosophy...  

 

[zenny]

@Dhana Choko . Have you come across nathan gill's clarity book!,check out the following link, you might like his thoughts:http://holybooks.lichtenbergpress.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/Nathan-Gill-Clarity.pdf?960bec .

Edited February 12, 2016 by zenny