How Complicated Did Spirituality Need To Be Before Your Enlightenment?

[BipolarGrowth]

There’s no way to stop seeking if one has not started seeking. There’s no way to stop seeking until the seeking activity brings about a change which is authentically deemed to be satisfactory. 

[Breakingthewall]

you seek because you are a tangle of confusion. the search makes the knots undo, the attachments relax. you begin to flow more than to search, and when flowing the limits dissolve

[Seraphim]

12 hours ago, softlyblossoming said:

Can the "path" be simplified to not seeking in this moment, again and again and again?

Is this practice enough for complete final enlightenment?

What would you add to it?

The I-thought always seeks, always limits our happiness. It sounds depressing but it is also a good thing, because once it disappears for real you will have a happiness so great that you will almost forget all those years of seeking, it will feel like reality has always been this perfect, you just couldn't see it before.

I think a quicker path is to receive shaktipat/spiritual transmissions from a good teacher while contemplating on non-duality truths. The contemplation allows you to see/feel the truth, and the shaktipat assists with that and also makes the I-thought surrender. The contemplation that worked for me was the idea that I am not who I think I am, I am reality itself, when you really see it and feel it the I-thought may surrender and disappear forever.

 

[softlyblossoming]

On 06/03/2022 at 5:37 PM, SriSriJustinBieber said:

No continue to seek, in my opinion seeking is necessary. However, make that seeking one-pointed and unadressed, or adressed to the whole, or pointed inward. Don't seek in the world of concepts or in the experiences of the senses, or in the energies. That which you seek cannot be different than you ultimately, you see?

Practicing some concentration exercise can be helpful to unify the seeking impulse

Thank you. My take away: Unify seeking. Seek only one thing and do so gladly.

On 07/03/2022 at 0:29 AM, BipolarGrowth said:

On 06/03/2022 at 3:35 PM, WelcometoReality said:

All realizations are subjective. They don't exist until they've been realized.

I think this is a key thing many people misunderstand. 

Hi, Brandon. Would you elaborate on this point?

On 07/03/2022 at 0:33 AM, BipolarGrowth said:

There’s no way to stop seeking until the seeking activity brings about a change which is authentically deemed to be satisfactory. 

My take away: Seek happily.

23 hours ago, Seraphim said:

The I-thought always seeks, always limits our happiness. It sounds depressing but it is also a good thing, because once it disappears for real you will have a happiness so great that you will almost forget all those years of seeking, it will feel like reality has always been this perfect, you just couldn't see it before.

I think a quicker path is to receive shaktipat/spiritual transmissions from a good teacher while contemplating on non-duality truths. The contemplation allows you to see/feel the truth, and the shaktipat assists with that and also makes the I-thought surrender. The contemplation that worked for me was the idea that I am not who I think I am, I am reality itself, when you really see it and feel it the I-thought may surrender and disappear forever.

Hello, and thank you for your compassionate contribution to my thread. I have three questions following what you've been kind enough to share with me so honestly:

1. Can there be experiences/states of 'no I-thought' before enlightenment, or are those only 'false/fake/pseudo-' non-seeking?

2. Are you qualified to give shaktipat transmission and would you be open to doing these for me? If you do not offer this freely, how much would I have to pay you for - say - 10 sessions? Is 10 a good place to start, or are more typically required to start to see results? To what degree is seeing results important vs. superfluous?

3. Do you know of anyone offering free authentic shaktipat transmission?

4. Is it better to recieve shaktipat from one guru or multiple gurus?

 

With metta,

Robert

[softlyblossoming]

On 07/03/2022 at 0:48 AM, Breakingthewall said:

you seek because you are a tangle of confusion. the search makes the knots undo, the attachments relax. you begin to flow more than to search, and when flowing the limits dissolve

Beautiful. I'm letting this sink in for a few minutes and rereading when it feels intuitive to do so. Thank you.

[SOUL]

@softlyblossoming  Reading through this thread I can't help but see the 'conditional' mind at work setting up hoops to jump through, obstacles to overcome and goals to achieve for something that doesn't require any of them to be..... just being.

Even 'seeking' is an inner activity the mind sets up so it preoccupies our awareness to search for something it imagines we don't have. To acquire a state or level instead of simply awakening to the realization we are already complete... in being.

All that activity is a distraction from being present, it's motivated from desire because the mind attempts to fill what it perceives as empty. Of course, you will read these words, maybe understand them but likely not enough to satisfy so compelled to do more activity.

Leave the activity for the body to do what it needs to survive because as the cliche says, before liberation chop wood, carry water, after liberation chop wood, carry water. Awakening isn't doing anything, it's realization that there's nothing to be done, it is being.

Or you can just keep doing stuff you think will make something happen...

[softlyblossoming]

@SOUL Thank you, that was a very lucid clarification. In light of what you've shared, I'd like to rephrase my original question, if you don't mind answering it again :

Can the spiritual "path" be simplified to not doing the seeking behaviour in this moment, and repeating this practice that I am calling 'not doing the seeking behaviour' in the next moment, and so on?

Edited March 8, 2022 by softlyblossoming
simplified

[Seraphim]

10 hours ago, softlyblossoming said:

1. Can there be experiences/states of 'no I-thought' before enlightenment, or are those only 'false/fake/pseudo-' non-seeking?

2. Are you qualified to give shaktipat transmission and would you be open to doing these for me? If you do not offer this freely, how much would I have to pay you for - say - 10 sessions? Is 10 a good place to start, or are more typically required to start to see results? To what degree is seeing results important vs. superfluous?

3. Do you know of anyone offering free authentic shaktipat transmission?

4. Is it better to recieve shaktipat from one guru or multiple gurus?

1. Yes it's possible, in a successful self-inquiry session, the I-thought lose its control and temporarily disappear, but I was never successful with self-inquiry so that's why I did not mention it, I think it only works for experts at meditation with years of experience. 2. No I don't know how to do that. If you feel the energy and you meditate with shaktipat maybe once or twice a week then I think you will get results quickly, if you don't feel it then you can keep doing it and eventually you will unlock the ability to feel subtle energies. 3. Yes there are some who do that, someone on this forum wrote a great thread about it: https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/71828-transmissions-for-enlightenment/

4. One I think, but you can try many to find the one that works best for you.

[Spence94]

I wouldn't advise on just stopping meditation just because you have had one enlightenment. Let go of the idea that enlightenment is just this one off thing that happens with a bang and then you have 'completed' it like you're playing fucking grand theft auto and you've reached 100% completion and its onto the next game... nah man. 

[WelcometoReality]

3 minutes ago, Spence94 said:

I wouldn't advise on just stopping meditation just because you have had one enlightenment. Let go of the idea that enlightenment is just this one off thing that happens with a bang and then you have 'completed' it like you're playing fucking grand theft auto and you've reached 100% completion and its onto the next game... nah man. 

Yeah thats a good point. There might be a bang or two but the real work starts afterwards. ?

[SOUL]

@softlyblossoming  Well, since you took the time to rephrase it to ask I can say the short answer is... yes.

The longer answer is it isn't something to be done in 'each' moment as if the present moment is a bunch of individual moments strung together. The mind will try to 'taskify' our being present as 'doing not doing' that it has to keep doing to accomplish the 'not doing'.

Seeking answers to questions, gaining knowledge, understanding or finding truth becomes a task that the mind will use to distract from being awareness. These are used by the mind to fill a void, an existential yearning which creates so much self suffering instead of it's cessation.

Even meditating gets taskified by the mind as a practice to do, set aside time to do it, and 'oh I haven't done my meditating yet so I better do that or I won't get the thing done I'm seeking to do'. Abiding in being awareness is presence in the now and is effortless, seamless and timeless.

We may 'practice' meditation at first to help us become awakened to our awareness so we can view the activity of the mind and not be consumed by it. Although, ultimately to be in 'abidance' without efforting to be present will transcend any activity the monkey mind creates.

So, to be clear, there will be activity in the mind even though we are abiding in awareness. All sorts of thoughts, emotions, inner dialog, impulses and urges will spring from our subconscious mind. Not to get distracted and attached to them as our identity will cease self suffering.

Eventually, abiding in awareness will inform the mind to be attentive to awareness as well so the activity of the mind will reflect that presence of being. It's rare to happen instantaneously, most often it happens gradually like a flower softly blossoming.. :).

I would encourage everyone to be aware that any work we may be doing as 'spirituality' or 'self actualization' or however one wants to call it isn't allowing being awareness to happen, it just happens. All that work does is discipline the mind so it's not a distraction to being awareness.

Though, the common issue is the work that is supposed to cultivate the mind to be less of a distraction to us abiding in awareness serves as one of the largest distraction to being presence. We become so focused on the path we get lost on the journey.

So, yea... there's the short answer and the long one. haha

[Spence94]

13 hours ago, WelcometoReality said:

Yeah thats a good point. There might be a bang or two but the real work starts afterwards. ?

@WelcometoReality Yes. Part of the journey not the end.

[softlyblossoming]

@SOUL Thank you again for taking the time to explain everything in such an easily understood format. I'm so glad that things are finally starting to make sense! You have a way with words, SOUL.

[softlyblossoming]

17 hours ago, Spence94 said:

I wouldn't advise on just stopping meditation just because you have had one enlightenment. Let go of the idea that enlightenment is just this one off thing that happens with a bang and then you have 'completed' it like you're playing fucking grand theft auto and you've reached 100% completion and its onto the next game... nah man. 

@Spence94 Thank you. It's like being oriented to the present moment and not the big win at the end, right?