tsuki

@Mikael89 It's not that simple. Talking about enlightenment is tricky, as I do not understand it fully (hopefully!). It is a first-person perspective thing. You can say various things about it with full awareness that you have no clue what you are talking about. That, or you can recognize enlightenment in everybody, even everyday people. You have surely heard the phrase that we're all enlightened but we just don't know it. The moment you define it, it becomes something else. At least the thing I that experience as enlightenment.

@Feel Good Don't worry, keep working at it. The moment you think you 'get it', or that you think you're 'enlightened' is the moment you lose it. That's just the nature of it. The best thing I noticed is to simply let it go. Surrender it, with full responsibility that it may leave, never to be seen again. It may be 'gone' for weeks, or even months, but it will come back if you're open for it. The other thing is that 'unpleasantness' is never gone, but suffering is. So is your ego. It is still there, but at least you can see it clearly. And when others call you names, remember that external judgments about your enlightenment are projections. Either theirs, or yours. Use it as an opportunity to surrender your suffering. It does not imply doing anything in particular (not even stopping yourself from responding to trolls). Just observe yourself. Quietly. That's all.

@zoey101 Remember that feeling. Take note whenever you observe it. It's important. How is your fear of mirrors?

@zoey101 How about: 'looking at it with my own eyes, free of pre-expectations'? It did look weird, didn't it?

@Feel Good Man, you've grown. I'm proud of you.

@non_nothing Hahaha, you call that a power?

@non_nothing Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_wei If, there is no difference between winning and losing - do you really do anything? There is action, but is there will? Is the action really attributable to you, or are you just an observer of whatever happens? Being different How much difference between yes and no? What difference between good and bad? What the people fear must be feared. O desolation! Not yet, not yet has it reached its limit! Everybody’s cheerful, cheerful as if at a party, or climbing a tower in springtime. And here I sit unmoved, clueless, like a child, a baby too young to smile. Forlorn, forlorn. Like a homeless person. Most people have plenty. I’m the one that’s poor, a fool right through. Ignorant, ignorant. Most people are so bright. I’m the one that’s dull. Most people are so keen. I don’t have the answers. Oh, I’m desolate, at sea, adrift, without harbor. Everybody has something to do. I’m the clumsy one, out of place. I’m the different one, for my food is the milk of the mother. https://astudygroup.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/lao-tzu_-tao-te-ching_-a-book-a-ursula-k-le-guin.pdf

@non_nothing Name one thing that makes a difference to you.

@non_nothing Does it matter which definition you choose? Can you really make such a choice honestly? The question is: did your lack of willingness and unwillingness stop you from earning money? No. When there is no difference between earning and not earning - there is also no reason to stop doing it. Did it make you want to kill yourself? No. When there is no difference between life and death there is no drive towards self-destruction. Sounds like liberation to me. Now, the question is: is there a difference between living a meaningful life and meaningless life?

@non_nothing Laziness is when you should do it, but for some reason - don't. Awareness is the freedom to do it, or not to do it and it doesn't matter which you choose.

The whole lecture is very interesting, but I am specifically pointing to 1:09:37. This is the part in which he talks about thinking with the 'empty mind'. Just as a curiosity to explore.

@Outer Yes, you know all the ways in which logic can call things illogical. Is there any lens other than logic that you use to see the world? In before: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem It would be like treating logic as insult. @Charlotte I'm sorry for derailing your thread. We'll get past it eventually.

@Outer You calling my nonsense 'red herrings' tells me that you get off it as well. It is not logical to use logic, but it is perfectly illogical to both use it and not use it. Logic has its places, but existential, or phenomenological questions are not within its domains. To logic, certain things just are what they are. My presence here does not threaten your little bastion from my perspective. It may only look like that through your little manhole.

@Outer Why is it logical to use logic?

@Outer Oh, so we're playing along the lines of clear language. Huh? I thought that it is, what it is. Why do you want to know why does she want to know?

@Outer Hahaha. Did you like it? What belief did I just contradict?

@Faceless It is not only about text. It's about reality itself. Try acknowledging that the same 'thing' that goes on and lets you read this text happens all the time. As you look around your home and see a table with a computer, you are reading reality itself. There is no such thing as a table unless you read it. That is because you know to look for a table. When you learned how to read - you learned to look for words and notice them in relation to the sounds people make when they speak. In the same sense you can understand yourself as you read your own posts, you can read yourself as you look around. In this sense, thought is not merely 'monkey chatter' that goes on forever. Thought is everything, but since you are new to text - you may not have noticed it. Text is just a very powerful mechanism of storing understanding so that it can be transcended through self-reflection. If this self-reflective movement is mastered (internalized), it can be brought (or noticed) in everyday situations. When you speak to a cashier, you may use her as a mirror to read yourself off her by observing your own reactions. This self-reflective movement is not something to be done for the sake of something else (fear). It is just a not-yet recognized conditioned movement of a different kind than what you call thought. This 'tower of observers' I was speaking of lately is another dimension of time to be recognized. Time is not only fear between exclusive opposites, but this mechanical movement can be seen within insight, or 'fear' of fear. 'Fear' is here similar, but not exactly the same than fear. Once you see the similarity it becomes much more acceptable to call it that.

@Charlotte My current answer is: The moment we notice for the first time that we've been doing something that can be named (such as listening to music), the like or dislike is 'created' by the relationship to our conscious beliefs. If, for example - we recognize that we're listening to music in relationship to our religious beliefs, we may 'create' dislike, as it contradicts something important. We can also create pre-expectations of what is wrong and what is right if some belief is so important that it occupies our conscious attention all the time. This belief is what constitutes identity. Then, we observe our everyday occurrences and judge things as good or bad automatically. This is what 'steers' us towards and away from things. If we are not conscious of the mechanics of fragmentation, contradiction and belief - it is very difficult to observe oneself in everyday life. So, in short - it is a phase of 'changing' consciousness that is necessary to prime the mechanism of self-reflection via suffering.

@Charlotte Let me answer this question as I understand it, with full awareness that @Faceless may mean something else. This may be a good way to bring us closer together. So - basically, fragmentation is the difference between yes and no. Everything, always is either yes, or no. For example, for some people: Democracy is yes and totalitarianism is no Pizza is yes and vegetables are no Philosophy is yes and meditation is no Art is yes and pop-culture is no Pen is yes and pencil is no I am not establishing valid preferences here, but giving an example of what a prototypical person may be fragmented into. There is an attraction towards yes, and repulsion away from no. This attraction and repulsion is what fear is. The movement of thought is the preference of one over the other in everyday situations. The so-called conditioned mind is the mind that cannot see this movement that attracts and repulses between opposites. The so-called unconditioned mind is the one that can see the unity of opposites (for example, the unity between democracy and totalitarianism) and acknowledges that both outcomes are the same. It is holistic in its nature. The biggest problem with this definition of fragmentation is that the difference between yes and no is meaning. The unconditioned mind is the meaningless mind, and for the conditioned, meaning is yes (attractive) and meaninglessness is no (repulsive). To even begin working with this definition, one has to be willing to accept that meaninglessness and meaning are not mutually exclusive. Even if it appears as contradiction. This contradiction is what is the main obstacle in transition from the meaning-seeking mind to meaningless-seeking mind.

@now is forever Zooming

@Faceless This is it. That is the movement I am speaking about. It is not a movement through effort, but via seeing through the past. Can you observe as the past is being accumulated and then discarded via stepping foot on a new world? This new world is 'empty' because it is not yet populated by observation of how this movement itself works. Once this knowledge is accumulated, the next step is taken. Into a new world. It is not a movement of effort, of trying to understand myself. It is effortless. I can see through myself as if I saw through a fraud. In this sense, there is an interplay of knowledge and seeing through. This very text is a knowledge of how it works and once I can see through it, I take a next step into the 'unknown'. It is the moment of 'death' and then, the empty observer is born. It feels like a self-constructing tower of observers, all looking down, and the moment one is born, the other watches him and understands what he does. In doing that, the one being watched vanishes and the next is born, watching the watcher.

@MarkusSweden Huh, wouldn't the same be true for the person that meditated for 20 years? Would that person be willing to start philosophizing? Why can't we do both? Because we have to commit to either one, or the other?

@Nahm Let's just keep being presents for each other to unwrap . There is unity in the mutual friction of the Ego.

@Faceless Bingo. That is what Observation of fear feeds on. This is what keeps it in motion. As I write this sentence, it ate itself, as it implied that it fears fear.

@Nahm Are you willing to find your answer as you wrote it within my answer as I wrote it? I can see agreement between us. There is a clue in my signature.