Why Do Some Very Devoted People Never Become Enlightened

[Guest username]

16 minutes ago, Annetta said:

Something deep inside is telling me that I'm choosing all of this nonsense.


 

What do you mean?

[Prabhaker]

11 hours ago, username said:

For instance, why are there monks who meditate for decades without becoming enlightened?

When monks who meditate for decades don't become enlightened, either something is wrong with monks or enlightenment never happens. How a person doing his job , living in society, family can expect enlightenment ? 

I believe something is terribly wrong with monks and monasteries !

[Prabhaker]

35 minutes ago, Annetta said:

Something deep inside is telling me that I'm choosing all of this nonsense.

 Those who are in search will need infinite patience. Patience is the greatest religious quality; if you have patience nothing else is needed. Patience is enough, enough unto itself. Patience means hope, trust, and without any hurry, without any impatience. 

All meditation is waiting. All prayer is infinite patience. The whole of religion consists in not allowing the mind to create more problems for you. 

The journey is vast, and you cannot be in a hurry. If you are in a hurry you will never be able to move to the other shore.

[Salaam]

3 hours ago, Prabhaker said:

Sex is the absence of meditation. If you accept it and don't transcend it by becoming more meditative, you will remain stuck . Monks neither accept it nor transcend it, they try to repress it.

Sex is a natural phenomenon. Sexuality is unnatural, abnormal and pathological. When sex becomes cerebral, when sex enters in your head, it becomes sexuality. Sexuality is consequence of sexual repression practiced by monks. 

What?

Sexuality is the way we inject meaning and personality to our sexual appetite. How we carry ourselves and behave when sexual tension and desire is present.

Why are you demonizing sex and sexuality? The best sex is when your heart, mind, soul, and primal sexuality are all in harmonized alignment and the partner your with meets you in that space as a mirror and the light of fully realized sex, reflecting back and forth creates this shared experience of meaning, bonding, and creation.

Maybe you are meaning to say monks repress themselves and isolate themselves to the point where their rapport with their sexuality becomes masturbatory and disconnected from the other parts of us, that create a balanced, healthy sexuality?

[hundreth]

I believe they are enlightened. Then again, I think most of you are enlightened too. Most of us understand non duality. Most of us have felt / experienced it in some way, shape or form. We are all one, one is limitless, and dualism exists within that one. Boom, you are enlightened. Why are you all making such a big deal out of enlightenment? 

That is, unless you've redefined enlightenment as transcendence or full acceptance or something else that is grand which you are seeking.  Ok, you're enlightened, you know you're God playing in his own playground called dualism. Now you're obsessed with learning how to detach yourself from the game while you're inside the game. 

It's worth realizing it's all just a game. It's worth being able to detach yourself sometimes to regain perspective and be more resilient. To recharge your energy. After that point, why don't you just play the game you're here to play?

“If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.”
― Alan W. Watts

 

I believe this applies to enlightenment as well. 

Edited April 3, 2017 by hundreth

[Prabhaker]

7 minutes ago, Salaam said:

Maybe you are meaning to say monks repress themselves and isolate themselves to the point where their rapport with their sexuality becomes masturbatory and disconnected from the other parts of us, that create a balanced, healthy sexuality?

Sex is natural, sexuality is not. What behavior do you expect from monks who live in monasteries where no woman has ever entered ? 

[Salaam]

17 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

Sex is natural, sexuality is not. What behavior do you expect from monks who live in monasteries where no woman has ever entered ? 

Let's put monks to the side for a moment and just focus on sexuality.

Do you know what the definition of sexuality is?

It is the quality or state of being sexual.

It is complete nonsense for anyone to say that is not natural.

Can sexuality be twisted, made sick? Yes, but sexuality as a whole IS natural.

[Prabhaker]

6 minutes ago, Salaam said:

Do you know what the definition of sexuality is?

 Sex is not the function of the head, but when sex enters in through the head it becomes sexuality. Then you think about sex, then you fantasize about sex. And the more you think, the more you fantasize about it, the more you will get into trouble because then nothing real will ever satisfy you because there is no limitation on fantasy, and reality is limited.

Anyway I want to discuss on topic.

Edited April 3, 2017 by Prabhaker

[Salaam]

2 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

 Sex is not the function of the head, but when sex enters in through the head it becomes sexuality. Then you think about sex, then you fantasize about sex. And the more you think, the more you fantasize about it, the more you will get into trouble because then nothing real will ever satisfy you because there is no limitation on fantasy, and reality is limited.

Any I want to discuss on topic.

Well, eventually a person can get to the point, where sexuality doesn't push at you like that and create obsessive or circular thought patterns. I guess we could say what you described above is an example of sexual frustration thought patterns, however sexual harmony expresses differently.

My main point, is to caution you against attaching to this idea that sexual thoughts, or any involvement with your mind when it comes to sex, is being unnatural.

People often make the mistake of attaching to an out of balance expression of a thing, be it sex, fear, pain, etc. and demonizing it as some unnatural or horrible thing in totality. We have to see the nuance, the different ways a thing can express, before labeling it's totality as unnatural, twisted, wrong, etc. 

[Pierre]

15 hours ago, username said:

why are there monks who meditate for decades without becoming enlightened?

Well, I've just read a book about meditation by Ajahn Brahm, and it completely shattered my nice beliefs about "spiritual professionals" such as monks. So narrow-minded, dogmatic and life-denying that I just felt like shooting myself. I had always thought this kind of mindset was the privilege of conventional exoteric religion. Apparently not. Anyway, I understand better how they can get completely stuck.

[Arkandeus]

5 hours ago, username said:

@Shin I'm not opposed to being in a relationship in theory, but I'm just trying to understand if I need to go out and find one. I'm assessing the pros and cons.

you don't need to do anything, you are complete, but you shouldn't ignore your sexual energy either. 

which means, if a relationship comes, and you feel the urge to engage, let it be so, but don't seek out a relationship for the sake of relationship. 

if you don't find a relationship, don't rub one off everyday.  unless you really feel like it. 

I think there's a subtlety that monks and priests have missed. 
To be drunk in sexuality, whether it's masturbation or sex is indeed bad, I have felt it in the past, it robs you of your spiritual energy. 
But to ignore masturbation and sex fully is also bad. it's just growing a monster of frustration inside yourself, and that I have also tried in the past and felt the horribleness of it. 

the answer is in balance. 
the circumstance never mattered, it doesn't matter if you have sex or if you masturbate. It doesn't matter if you don't do these things. 

What matters is why, the physical act doesn't matter,but why do you do the things you do, the spiritual side. 
There's always a physical act and the spiritual side behind it.

Let things come naturally. 
If you feel the urge to masturbate, do so, but don't do it when you don't feel the natural, don't seek it. Same with sex. 
Don't seek sex, let it come to you. Now this can be confusing, because as men, we often make the first move. You can make the first move without seeking. If the first move/approach feels completely natural, in flow, without any ulterior motive, it's not seeking. 

It's all in balance, to have sex or not doesn't matter, it's how you do it. 
Are you doing it out of fun,joy and flow or are you seeking to fulfill yourself, craving pleasure? 

to really accept and transcend sexuality is to let sexual energy be what it is, let it enter your life when it does, when it's not there, don't be frustrated don't seek it , when it's there embrace it
 

Edited April 3, 2017 by Arkandeus

[Martin123]

@Prabhaker Sexuality is divine. It is the connection to the divine. What is sex? It is god making love with himself. Can you get more divine than that?
YES YOU CAN! GANGBAANG! 
DING DING DING 
=D NO BUt SRSLY. Sexuality = connection to the most divine profoundness of our reality

[AlwaysBeNice]

I don't there is too much of a narrow minded view of enlightened/not enlightened.

I.e. I watched maybe a 100 + videos of Buddha at the Gas pump, many of the guests had decades of experience, and they all tend to say the deepening and enlightening just doesn't really end, and paradoxically you are already enlightened also.

So I think monks with decades of experience really all have a pretty high degree of freedom and realization to them.

Just look at them, monks with even a few years of experience already tend to have an amazing presence.

[AlwaysBeNice]

I also think the misconception that some 'big deep transcendence of entire ego system and the release of all conditioning' that should come after some simple understanding that you should get after a few hours of self-inquiry and listening to a few satsangs is a perverted misunderstanding, created by immature lazy unconscious teachers still mesmerized by money and validation, slobbered down by impatient westerners that think their spiritual transcendence should come as quickly as they can swallow down a big mac.

[Heart of Space]

It's always interesting to read this forum.  So many people who have not actually attained enlightenment talking with such sureness and specificity about it. 

I think there's a little too much talk about enlightenment.  It can be bad for progress in humble opinion. 

Anyways, continue on.

[Harikrishnan]

Every life has its purpose and this life may not be there's to realize Truth.

[Guest username]

5 hours ago, Martin123 said:

@Prabhaker Sexuality is divine. It is the connection to the divine. What is sex? It is god making love with himself. Can you get more divine than that?
YES YOU CAN! GANGBAANG! 
DING DING DING 
=D NO BUt SRSLY. Sexuality = connection to the most divine profoundness of our reality

Can't that connection be achieved simply through spiritual growth and being?

[Gopackgo]

It's because they are chasing a concept predicated on knowing something that is unknowable. All we can ever know is what arises in us. One of the things arising in us is fake, and it is hard to see how that fake thought works because it chases anything that will make now better. Now is perfect, and it is all we ever know. Whether you chase money, enlightenment, love, sex, the american dream, it is all predicated on needing something to be more of what you are. Chasing need and want is the very thing that fuels the me thought. How could chasing enlightenment be any different? The inherent assumption there is that enlightenment is morally superior to everything else. You have to know when to stop the pursuit/needing process for the me to quiet. When it quiets, it can be recognized for the thought process it is.

[Gopackgo]

@My_Name_Is_Mud . You only get to use that one more time

[Martin123]

@username No sexuality = connection.
Sex is just one form of it.
Enlightenment = sexuality.