Why there is attachment to thought

[Osaid]

1 hour ago, Water by the River said:

Welcome home to a home you never left.

Thank you.

1 hour ago, Water by the River said:

What was your practice/path?

Don't know how to define it really. I've always been super critical of reality and its metaphysics, so to speak. For me, reality was like a video game, and I was always trying to question it and find "bugs" in my experience. Same goes for humans and any ideologies they tried to push onto me.

But really, it was just simple sober contemplation and self inquiry. I look at experience, and I ask, what are you hiding from me? Do you really work this way? What if I assume that you work this way instead? etc. And, experience can't hide anything from you of course, you just have direct access to it all the time. If your assumption is wrong, it will just get rid of it for you through your own conscious experience. If it's right, it will just be confirmed by experience. It's all direct, right there in front of you.

I genuinely believe any human can become enlightened through simple sober inquiry. It's not directly some genetic thing. It's learned. You can unlearn it, and become enlightened. Cats are enlightened. Worms are enlightened. Babies are enlightened, since they have no object permanence. It's just that humans gain intelligence in the form of memory and imagination, and we get tangled up in this intelligence. Our intelligence starts telling us "You have to always use this form of intelligence to navigate reality", and so on. 

My specific enlightenment experience is briefly described in this post:
 

 

[Water by the River]

1 hour ago, Osaid said:

I genuinely believe any human can become enlightened through simple sober inquiry.

For the majority (95%+) of cases I doubt that sober inquiry can do it. The "liftoff platform" for Enlightenment (the platform on which the accident of Enlightenment can happen) normally are awakened nondual and empty states. 95% is of course a rough estimation, but if asked and based on the contemprorary & historical cases I am aware of that would be my estimate.

1 hour ago, Osaid said:

 Cats are enlightened. Worms are enlightened. Babies are enlightened, since they have no object permanence

I don't agree on that. See Ken Wilber Pre- Trans-Confusion on the topic of babies. Animals are not enlightened, they are not even self-reflectively aware.

Yet, these are beings that share the same Infinite Impersonal Consciousness that is the true essence of all of us.

But anway, something has shifted for you, and that is wonderful. Enjoy it, and try to live from it.

Selling Water by the River

Edited August 24, 2023 by Water by the River

[Osaid]

Just now, Water by the River said:

I don't agree on that. See Ken Wilber Pre- Trans-Confusion on the topic of babies. Animals are not enlightened, they are not even self-reflectively aware.

I don't think they are operating from self-image, which I believe is the basis of the shift.

If you want to add the qualifier of "self-reflection" to it, then enlightenment just becomes a human phenomenon. I don't like this, because it kind of implies that it's separate from other states or experiences, and it also turns it into something human. It's just the natural and truest state of things.

It's just a complete relinquishing to experience, whatever that experience may involve, whether it's being a cat, a bird, etc. I don't think cats second guess their experience or imagine anything on top, same for babies or other organisms which have not developed an imaginative intelligence as high as normal functional humans. 

2 minutes ago, Water by the River said:

For the majority (95%+) of cases I doubt that sober inquiry can do it. The "liftoff platform" for Enlightenment (the platform on which the accident of Enlightenment can happen) normally are awakened nondual and empty states. 

It is normal, but I think this can be changed. Most people just don't take any of this seriously, and they are sick of hearing the word enlightenment. It needs to be communicated in a more direct and palpable manner, so that you don't have to journey off into some cave somewhere, but rather just do it from home or something. But yes, this is the reality of most people nowadays.

[Water by the River]

31 minutes ago, Osaid said:

If you want to add the qualifier of "self-reflection" to it, then enlightenment just becomes a human phenomenon. I don't like this, because it kind of implies that it's separate from other states or experiences, and it also turns it into something human. It's just the natural and truest state of things.

Yes, there are quite many ways one can use the word Enlightenment when one knows where its aiming towards (Absolute Reality/Infinity Consciousness). There is only Suchness, or Infinite Consciousness, or Being, or whatever (put in a term/signifier of ones preference), or Raspberry (credit to Ralston on that one), and of course the mindstream of these beings (animals or babies) is nothing else... Buddha-Nature for the Buddhists....

Yet, I believe it makes sense for clarities sake to limit the signifier/term Enlightenment for a self-reflective being that once had a self-aware separate-self (ego) and transcended that in Enlightenment, and can now actually talk about it.  

 

31 minutes ago, Osaid said:

It is normal, but I think this can be changed. Most people just don't take any of this seriously, and they are sick of hearing the word enlightenment. It needs to be communicated in a more direct and palpable manner, so that you don't have to journey off into some cave somewhere, but rather just do it from home or something. But yes, this is the reality of most people nowadays.

I agree that the contemplation/self-inquiry-part should be done in the most direct and efficient manner, and also be communicated as such. I wrote extensively on these issues also.

Yet, based on all I know and am aware of, my guess is that for 95%+ of people Enlightenment needs practice to gain awakened (nondual and empty) states. All spiritual systems are based on that. I needed a lot of practice in training in these states.

Of course, ladies and gentlemen like Anandamayi Ma and Ramana and others got them delivered more or less free home.  Yet, the teaching system of these "naturals" (often dis-emphasizing the training of awakened states, because they got them for free) is maybe not the most promising approach for the majority of people who don't get these awakened states delivered for free. 

The final end of spectrum is something like Tony Parsons "Just do nothing" approach. Which is actually the last stage in many systems, once awakened nondual states "run" on autopilot without any "artifical" actitvity of the separate-self. Nonmeditation Yoga in Mahamudra for example.

But teaching only that is like teaching people the final 200 meters on how to climb K2, and then kick them out at base camp in summer cloths and without oxygen, and then wondering why they freeze and choke on the way to the summit and don't reach it.

Selling Water by the River

Edited August 24, 2023 by Water by the River

[Breakingthewall]

@Osaid

On 23/8/2023 at 4:27 PM, Osaid said:

 

On 23/8/2023 at 4:27 PM, Osaid said:

 

What you call enlightenment is transcending the ego mind. self-referential, comparative, evaluative and limiting mental activity, and open yourself to the now and be the now. I think what you say is the most important part of the spiritual path, realizing reality, but not the end. enlightenment is more, and I say it only for glimpses. I can be in the state you speak of, and it is the end of self-inflicted mental suffering. Maybe I can be in this state without psychedelics for a month, after continuous spiritual work. But I know this is just the beginning. I can align with reality more perfectly, I can understand more deeply, I can open to the now more detachedly. And above all, I can realize the absolute and be the absolute in a total way. this is where you recognize yourself as existence and joy overflows