Not Sure What To Say About This...

[electroBeam]

I was listening to a guided meditation by Adyshanti today, and I had an insight, but I'm not sure on how to take it....

For a bit of context: Whenever I meditate, I'm always trying my hardest to get the most out of the meditation session, I make sure I focus really hard on the present moment, and make sure I let go of my thoughts as much as I can, any act that is the opposite of what mainstream society does -> get distracted by toxic thoughts, etc.

So I've always subconsciously assumed that enlightenment would be something like this: my mind gets very still, my ego disappears, I start to see a deep pitch black void that's behind the experience I see, like opening a closet and finding god or something in it(makes me laugh now ) and boom enlightenment.

But I always got really frustrated, because I could never seem to find it, no matter how much focus I put on it. And I could never drop beliefs I had that I intellectually knew were wrong(or so I thought) so basically meditation would just end up in one big frustrating cluster fuck, over and over again, and I wouldn't just do this for 20 mins a day, I would do this walking to university, in the shower, everywhere. 

 

But uh... Adyshanti said something in his guided meditation that hit me. He said that there is nothing to find, and that everything is already there. I've heard the mantra heaps of times(youre already enlightened, you just don't realize it, etc) but I didn't believe them because I'm still suffering and have an ego therefore im not enlightened. 

But I just realized that actually, everything that exists right now, everything that we already know, and have known just not acknowledged it, is actually all there is, and ever going to be. 

Like its not like awareness is just going to jump out of no where and go bam here I am! 

But does this actually mean that all awareness is, is that thing we've always been aware of since our birth? That thing that is aware of thoughts?

Because there is literally nothing else it could be.

But at the same time, its so simple and obvious, its always been there, like it hasn't come about just because we've started meditating, its always been about??

I'm expecting enlightenment to be more finding something, and not just accepting that the thing in front of our noses, like it has to be more than that, because if its not.... that's really fucking simple and obvious.

 

The other thing I'm confused about is, if its really that thing that we all know, and can all see right now! Then why do people talk about it being so different to that? Like everything being one? And how are there multiple levels to this thing? All levels are in awareness??

And why does it take so long to realize this when its so simple?

And why do people talk about different states of consciousness being required to realize this awareness? Like haven't we all been aware of it ever since we are born?

And why do people go through so much shit on this path if its so simple, i.e. the dark knight of the soul, weird non free will realizations, and so much other weird stuff. Its not like anything has changed realizing what awareness is, consciousness hasn't changed at all hahaha.

People make it seem so much like its about finding a needle in a haystack or something, like its hidden, and suddenly it will pop out of nowhere, but after that meditation session im not sure anymore.

Am I just dreaming something up or not getting something? Because this is very confusing. Sorry for the disorganized post, kudos to someone who can understand it.

[Leo Gura]

Nothing is hidden, of course. The thing you're looking for isn't a thing at all, and it sits nowhere else but right under your nose, in plain sight. Nothing is "located" exactly in the same place as everything you see. That's why it's hard to discriminate it.

BUT!

Unless you're disidentified from that body/mind, you ain't got it.

So yes, it's simple, but don't mistake that for you already grasping it. Chances are you haven't grasped it yet. And there are many depths of grasping it. When you finally do grasp it, there will be significant shift in your perspective. But don't take that to mean that you will start seeing Jesus, auras, and flying unicorns. Your perceptions will not change at all.

The reason you're struggling here is because your entire reality right now consists of perceptions. And you're being asked to discriminate awareness out from perception. Which is not something we generally hold as possible, and we don't know how to do it. Awareness is not perception. But you are aware of perceptions. You're trying to become aware of awareness itself, which is tricky, because awareness has zero properties. So you cannot latch onto it with the mind.

So yes, nothing is hidden. It's all right there in front of you. You're it! You're just not a perception or "a thing".

[Martin123]

@electroBeam Awareness is always there, it is you, its the presence. There is nothing behind YOU and IT because YOU are IT. Always have been.
EGO = overstimulated nervous system
You can imagine awareness being this vast sea of bliss and presence. At the same time there is this little "ball of emotions and thoughts and sensations" screaming HEEY YO LOOK AT ME! HERE! THERE'S LOADS OF SHIT GOING ON! HEY! ME! MMEEEE!! LALALAL DADADADADAD MEE MEE MEMEM MEE TOODLE DOODLE POOPY DOO
So awareness is like. WOaaah. Look! There is so much interesting shit going on!!!!! Emotions, thoughts, sensations.... SO COOL! Let me identify with that so I can get to know it better!

So you go and you calm down the nervous system. That is why I love shadow-work. Because until you do enough of clearing out your negative beliefs, and your emotions and recations calm down, you, as a body/mind complex will literally stop being that interesting to awareness, and you will in a sense explode into open space realizing that you have never been that interesting ball of attention seeking sensations!

[Guest username]

@Martin123 That would explain why mindfulness is so powerful as well.

[Prabhaker]

5 minutes ago, electroBeam said:

why do people go through so much shit on this path if its so simple

   Whenever someone begins meditation, he will become aware of many things of which he was not previously aware, and because of that awareness he will suffer. This is how things are, and one has to pass through them.

    So if you start meditation and you do not suffer, it means it is not meditation, but just a hypnosis. That means you are just drugging yourself. You are becoming more unconscious. With a real, authentic meditation you will suffer more, because you will become more aware. You will see the ugliness of your anger, you will feel the cruelty of your jealousy, you will now know the evidence of your behavior.

   Spirituality means not escaping from suffering but living with it: living with it, not escaping! And if you live with it, you will become more and more aware. If you want to escape, then you will have to leave awareness. Then, somehow, you will have to become unconscious.

   Suffering disappears in two ways. You become unconscious; then suffering disappears for you. But, really, suffering remains there. It cannot disappear. It remains there! Really, your consciousness has disappeared, so you cannot feel it, you cannot be aware of it. If you become more conscious, in the meantime you will have to suffer more. But accept suffering as a part of growth, as a part of training, as just a discipline, and then one day, when your consciousness has gone beyond your suffering, suffering will disappear not just for you – it will disappear objectively. Use suffering as a stepping-stone; do not escape from it. If you escape from it, you are escaping from your destiny, from the possibility of going beyond knowledge by using suffering as a device.

13 minutes ago, electroBeam said:

I always got really frustrated, because I could never seem to find it, no matter how much focus I put on it.

   More you find, more you will miss. Non-doing is meditation, but when I say non-doing is meditation I do not mean that you need not do anything. Even to achieve this non-doing, one has to do much. But this doing is not meditation. It is only a stepping stone, only a jumping board. All "doing" is just a jumping board, not meditation.

   If I say to you, "Just relax," it is impossible because you do not know what to do. You can just lie down, but that is not relaxation. The whole inner turmoil remains, and now a new conflict is there - to relax. Something over and above is added. The whole nonsense is there, the whole turmoil is there, with something added - to relax. A new tension is now added to all the old tensions. So a person who is trying to live a relaxed life is the most tense person possible. 

   First, the do something active, which is not really meditation at all, and second, the completely nonactive, the passive awareness that is really meditation.

[Martin123]

@username IN a way yeah. At the same time mindfulness is just a very very beginning stage of this. You gotta kinda notice the nervous system. But then it becomes redundant. 
What is really important is love! The quickest path to enlightenment (ok im not enlightened so this is a total pretense) is loving yourself relentlessly. Love yourself and watch every emotion transform into goodness. And soon enough, this goodness will start matching the bliss of existence. And as those 2 vibrations get aligned, you merge with your infinite nature.

[Evilwave Heddy]

2 minutes ago, Martin123 said:

@username IN a way yeah. At the same time mindfulness is just a very very beginning stage of this. You gotta kinda notice the nervous system. But then it becomes redundant. 
What is really important is love! The quickest path to enlightenment (ok im not enlightened so this is a total pretense) is loving yourself relentlessly. Love yourself and watch every emotion transform into goodness. And soon enough, this goodness will start matching the bliss of existence. And as those 2 vibrations get aligned, you merge with your infinite nature.

Hmm..interesting, Mr.123

But should I really believe you?

[Martin123]

@Evilwave Heddy 456

you can believe only your own intuition. Anything else is foolish.

[Guest username]

@Martin123 Do you have a self-love practice? Shadow work?

[Martin123]

@username

Make I love you the thing you say to yourself the most often. To your emotions, to your heart, and to your inner child. Activate your heart-center and spread the love you find in there throughout your whole body.
And then say again, I love you, relentlessly, until you anchor those words into your subconscious mind/nervous system. And it will become so automatic that every time you wake up, you will just on autopilot throw out "I love you" as first thought of the day.

Point this outwards as well. Somebody pisses you off? I love you. Computer? I love you. Family member, friend, coworker? I love you. Donald J. Trump? I love you.
This is a Matt Kahn practice, you can watch his talks/read his book (Whatever arises love that).
 

[Martin123]

@username I just wanna say that it Never EVER made sense to me to just meditate and do nothing and accept everything and blabla. I was always interested how to become this living moving chalice of goodness that spills out into the world and others can drink from.
So teachers like Osho and all those Zen-like practices made so little sense to me. What was always attractive to me was shadow-work though, because it seemed there was a lot of love involved.
And then I found profound teachers that resonated with this approach and pointed it even in the direction of self-realization. - Matt Kahn, Bentinho Massaro. That gave me confirmation to stay on my path and love more relentlessly than ever before.

[Guest username]

@Martin123 I see. So would you say it is largely due to your personal preference that you advocate this over other means?

[electroBeam]

@Martin123 https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjLzvKmw57TAhVKH5QKHXcECpMQtwIIGTAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DzQHv75ahYDQ&usg=AFQjCNF7DPt8-ZLqM4bO_A9YEpYSYTMoIA&sig2=qLHx9Mzy1eyNimNxpfFMyA&bvm=bv.152180690,d.dGo

[Evilwave Heddy]

4 minutes ago, Martin123 said:

 

Point this outwards as well. Somebody pisses you off? I love you. Computer? I love you. Family member, friend, coworker? I love you. Donald J. Trump? I love you.
This is a Matt Kahn practice, you can watch his talks/read his book (Whatever arises love that).
 

Can I use "I like you" instead?  Saying "I love you" doesn't seem as genuine as saying "I like you".  I feel a lot of sarcasm coming from it.

[electroBeam]

27 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

 

 If I say to you, "Just relax," it is impossible because you do not know what to do. You can just lie down, but that is not relaxation. The whole inner turmoil remains, and now a new conflict is there - to relax. Something over and above is added. The whole nonsense is there, the whole turmoil is there, with something added - to relax. A new tension is now added to all the old tensions. So a person who is trying to live a relaxed life is the most tense person possible. 

Yeah this is something I'm confused with. Everyone says let go and just surrender and don't control anything... but if you do that, you become unconscious because if you don't control anything and just do what your ego wants you to do, it will dream about stuff, get angry at you, etc. So I feel like I do have to control my meditation sessions otherwise it will be just a waste of time. Or try and control and not control, do what Osho says and let meditation affect you, like meditation is a medical doctor/psychologist, but still do what the doctor says(like focus etc) so still control yourself to a certain extent.

[Martin123]

@electroBeam I know that video haha! Watched it a long long time ago. I even did the practice several times! I got some nice emotional work done at the beginning of my journey like a year ago. 
 

13 minutes ago, Evilwave Heddy said:

Can I use "I like you" instead?  Saying "I love you" doesn't seem as genuine as saying "I like you".  I feel a lot of sarcasm coming from it.

Yes you can! You can use "I am a flying elephant that speaks to pink aliens whilst sucking a mosquitos dick" if that feels good to you. You get your energetical state in alignment more. Words are kind of empty in a sense. Meaningless. It is the energetical state or emotional drive behind them that makes affirmations powerful! Its always about the state!
HOWEVER! THAT BEING SAID YO! NO, not really you can't! stick with your I love you!

Why do you think I love you sounds sarcastic! Because you have been denying yourself all this love for such a long long long time! So stick with it, let the initial sarcasm and embarrassement fade away! Those are pointers showing you that it is actually working wonders!
When words such as
"Im awesome"
"Im love"
"Im amazing"
"I love you"
etc.
Trigger contraction in your body, it is a message that there is some unexamined unconscious negative belief that is keeping you in place.
So examine that, feel into that, work through that. Realize that you actually are fucking awesome, you are love, and you love! 

[Prabhaker]

3 minutes ago, electroBeam said:

Everyone says let go and just surrender and don't control anything...

Everyone is has a different life style, different mental state. If a person has returned from college, job or sports ground - he needs relaxation, he can just relax and surrender. You may need some activity so that you can sit silently afterwards. 

[Martin123]

@Evilwave Heddy And thank you for that man! I never had a problem with "I love you" In English, and never considered that to be a problem since I started thinking in English since I was like 15.
However There seems to be a negative connotation in my native tongue! Lovely! haha

[electroBeam]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Nothing is hidden, of course. The thing you're looking for isn't a thing at all, and it sits nowhere else but right under your nose, in plain sight. Nothing is "located" exactly in the same place as everything you see. That's why it's hard to discriminate it.

When you're trying to find god though, how does that leap happen from not seeing awareness to seeing awareness? Do you just have to keep trying and hope for the best? Because there's been plenty of meditation sessions where I wouldn't discover anything at all, just have insights. Sometimes it can feel like you're wasting your time or being mislead or something.

And also how do you actually break beliefs? Say you close your eyes and press your fingers real hard, and notice that you have an image of your fingers pressing and you really believe it, how do you break that belief? Because I've tried focusing awareness on it like a lazer beam in hope that it would lazer the belief in half, but that doesn't happen the belief just keeps with you.

[Martin123]

@electroBeam