tsuki

What sort of experience do you expect to live once you are enlightened? Over the course of your 10-year journey you left the world of polarities and experienced the state of oneness by (presumably) seeing how polarities are alike. There is no polarity to be pointed at to show you what enlightenment is. The more undifferentiated the world becomes, the more enlightened you are. The paradox is that noticing the progress of oneness is rooted in differentiation. To hinge on what enlightenment is, is to introduce fragmentation. In my personal opinion, the fact that you need to quench your thirst is enough evidence for being thirsty.

Hi @Sirius! Here is my advice: If you want to surround yourself with wise people to follow, then monastery may be a good idea. If you want to run away from your past - your past will follow you wherever you go. You won't run away from yourself. If you feel sick, your city will be a diseased one. If you feel fucked up, you will see that people are fucked up. You want to bury your past. That's radical. I advice you to sit on this idea for a few months and see if it sticks. You may feel like it couldn't possibly get any worse, but trust me - it always can. You know the suffering you're facing now - imagine swapping it for one that you don't know. When everything is truly meaningless, so is having meaning in life.

I would start by acknowledging the reason why I did it. Then, I would acknowledge how it made sense to do such a thing at the time. Lastly, seeing that I reject what I did at the time would hint to that I am a different person. If I rejected it back then, It wouldn't have happened. The only reason to willingly hurt others is that they reflect a part of you that you reject. Rejection of self is self-hurt, regardless of whether you lash out against yourself, or against others. Rejecting what you did only serves to perpetuate the cycle. Instead of hating yourself for your own stupidity, see yourself as your own victim. Don't be like people that want to murder the murderer.

@Ether No, not really. The world is a mirror, so is the art. All we see is a reflection of ourselves. What led me to the conclusion of author's disillusion is this fragment: The freedom entails possibility to become a slave. Either willingly, or ignorantly. What the author does in my opinion is to show us that once you look deep down into yourself - you see that all there is is society that is composed of individuals. That society is so intangibly insane that it doesn't even matter if you are insane by following it, or rejecting it. That the ultimate freedom lies in total conformity. After all, we are living in the society that promotes individualism. Isn't that crazy? To be normal is to be abnormal. Ha!

Beautiful. What I really like about it is that the author does not seem to be deluded into splitting the world into good and bad. The people in suits take the suits off when they return to their homes of cards.

Mastery of control is to know when to let go.

That's way easier to write than do, isn't it? All that is really happening is totally inexpressible. Once I write it down, it no longer is! This state of total presence is sometimes so agonizing that it really feels like you are trapped in the eternity of now When it comes to letting the ego play out - it is sometimes scary to think that the ego may play you. Don't get too caught up in that. Let it play you if it must and trust that you will wake up one day again. Being asleep is not THAT bad.

Ego is the phenomenon that localizes "you". You may be your body, you may be your mind, you may be your future or your past. The really sly thing is to identify yourself as awareness that supposedly does not identify with anything! Saying that you identify yourself as awareness is like saying that you attach yourself to non-attachment. By saying that, Ego antagonized itself and wants to get rid of an Ego! How is that supposed to work? How do you expect to let go if you hold on to letting go? Ego cannot run away from itself even if it sees itself as a problem.

No, I was just curious why should you mention my name here. Cool ?

Why?

You are not going to hear an honest answer to that question from a teacher. Teacher being me, your master, or @Faceless.

Isn't the "self" the greatest authority? The authority that tells to break from all others to attain freedom? The authority that tells to seek authorities to attain wisdom? One that is free does not fear enslavement, as freedom implies possibility to let oneself become a slave.

@Faceless It's very funny to speak of necessity of freedom. Freedom implies possibility to become unfree. @MarkusSweden "Ends" end with enlightenment.

@Ether Very strange. It's like coming to terms with uncertainty of existence by seeing that there is no reason to be certain of anything. It was a shift of perspective from: I know where I want to go, but don't know how and even if I did, I couldn't possibly execute that plan perfectly to get there. to I don't know where I am, so any path I take will take me to the exact same place. Too many things broke at once to say anything meaningful about it.

It all depends how you understand "practically". If you mean it as means to manipulate practical, everyday objects - there is none. You can't do anything new once you see the world as non-dual. If you mean psychologically, there is a vast difference. Once you see everything as part of yourself, you treat the world differently. Sure, you will die at one point, but you don't need to rely on heaven or hell to justify a "good" life. If you die - so be it. There is no need to fear death, or failure, as you embrace whatever happens.

"Norm" is the very same mechanism as "bias" and it is what we use to distinguish truth from false. It is a system of filters one applies to reality to "constrain" it and produce an illusion of control. Every conscious action can be viewed as a result of an (unconscious) bias, or norm. This illusion of control breaks down when one asks the question: "What norms are normal?", or to put it another way: "Which norms are good/true?". This cyclic dependency shows that logic cannot answer this questions and any norm is as valid as any other. For example: Is killing bad? Killing human beings must be bad, of course, unless we're defending something precious, like national identity. Is imprisonment bad? You can't imprison an unwilling person, unless he broke a law, or is declared insane by an expert and is a threat to the norm. Is stealing bad? Of course! Unless it is something that is rightfully ours, right? Even something as simple as self-expression can be seen as bias, as one may simply enjoy himself without presence or approval of other people. Even something as "accepting reality as it is" is a bias, as there is no reason to do so. Reason breaks down in real-world situations once one is willing to be honest with himself.

Coming back to your original definition, I think that there is agreement between us. There are no questions and answers, as what is gained by insight is space to make those. When one is ready to discard his simplifications of reality, he is open to look at what's left with more clarity and detachment. What I would add is that the process of thought is not fully experience-driven. Separate experiences are linked and the links are treated as something precious. As something to be expected in the present, or future. Care given to links distracts one from the present, as one tries to keep up with events that unfold and fit them into the expected scheme. This is ultimately grounded in distrust in ones ability to adapt. The Ego is scared, as it was hurt in the past. I think that the seeking is what heals the Ego. Not any specific path to Enlightenment, but the idea itself. The journey into the unknown with the intention to die. When one is completely ready to die, no links are necessary and the insight happens. This story, of course, is a link in itself.

Isn't wisdom enjoying things you need to do for your own good?

That is a difficult thing indeed. We sometimes even look back at our posts and see for ourselves that they didn't come off as we wanted them to . If I can't communicate what I think to myself, how am I supposed to communicate it to others? Haha What I came to realize is that there may be no end to illusions as we see no difference between them and reality. It may very well be what reality is made of. Ourselves! Deceiving ourselves that we are not making them up!

I posted this sometime ago, and I will quote myself if I may: In order to become Enlightened, you must choose a path. You need criteria to discard invalid paths. What are criteria to discard invalid criteria? Any criteria to do so would be criteria! There is no end to this cycle! Trust yourself. If something feels right, let yourself do it until it stops being right by itself. Growth is not a linear process and its power comes from combination of different methods. If you see that you get better by using Osho's methods - use them.

@Neo It has been a major revelation to me that thoughts are not limited to "the Voice" that narrates your life. I'm a bilingual person and I sometimes catch myself gluing together sentences from two different languages. Sometimes I think in English, sometimes in Polish. In my psyche reside different people that I converse with and come up with different sorts of concepts. This is a form of processing of experience and I think that it's a very important mechanism of my creativity. A major growth has occurred a few years back once I realized that their responses are my own. Ever caught yourself imagining an argument with your spouse? Yeah, try winning that argument when you know exactly what to say to make yourself angry, LOL. These whole personas in your psyche are what real people are made of as you meet them in the "physical" world. Did you ever wonder why other people misunderstand you? They have a model of you in their head and treat your words as something to fit into their model of you. You do that as well! This is what Ego is made of. Self-referential stories that fulfill themselves. Once you are angry at somebody, it is difficult to see their words as loving, as the model became "scary" or "annoying" and you annoy yourself with it. Even if they literally say "I love you", you may see it as sarcastic or said angrily. That they didn't REALLY mean it. There are different kinds of thoughts apart from language. That catchy song you heard on the radio that you play to yourself in your head? Yeah, that's a thought too. I imagine composers to think in original songs and write them down. Feelings are a form of thought that are ever-present in everyday objects or situations. Ever noticed that once you're angry, everything is irritating? That's a thought too, but it has no words content to it. "The Voice" on the other hand is very susceptible to emotions and drives all sorts of different narrations depending on the emotional content of the psyche. Even everyday objects are susceptible to emotions. A plate may become a thing to be thrown once you get angry enough. How the Voice is connected with feelings is a whole different story, as they are interconnected both ways and I don't want to dwell on that for too long. @Patang I may be getting ahead of myself again, but let me tell you a secret: there is no external and internal. Everything can be viewed from two different perspectives that cancel each other out. Everything is a huge process that has no beginning and end. This is the very nature of thought - to say that a part of cycle is the beginning, or an end. There also seems to be a shift in how you communicate ever since you posted your "done" thread. I like that, it seems more nuanced and open. Good job!

Has anybody mentioned Dark Souls? Fantastic game in itself, but what really got me hooked is the meaninglessness aspect. You play the game despite being beaten to a pulp every corner just for fun. Once you start to rush it to get to the end - the game starts to fight back so hard that it becomes completely unplayable. You have to sit and play it just for the sake of it and accept it. It's like hard determination sitting, but with a controller Brilliant!

So, to you they are some sort of divine revelation? The reality has spoken thing? How do you differentiate that from another layer of illusion? By the mere fact that you are absolutely sure of their correctness? The mystical aspect? Aren't thoughts like that too? Aren't you absolutely sure that you are understanding what I'm saying and not seeing some projection of your own understanding right now? Is that understanding a thought or an insight?

Don't let this sentence misguide you. Insight is no less and no more than a thought. In the same sense thought is insight-driven. Once an insight has occurred, one is more resistant to silly ideas taken from others and from the society and is free to construct original, more holistic thoughts. Thoughts that include more and more reality and do not see perspectives as good or bad. The more insights one experienced, the more he is willing to abandon his models of reality once it is apparent that they no longer work. Feelings are a great tool for evaluating thought systems. Negative emotions occur when reality does not conform to one's model. One may try to change reality to conform it, or change the models to make better predictions. When enough insights had occurred, one is more willing to change himself than dictate dogmas for others.

From my experience, Insight is thought-driven. Let me clarify: Thought is a meaningful "snapshot" of reality. Meaningful in a sense that it is taken seriously. It is not simply an "idea" to be held that may or may not be true. Thoughts are something to be taken AS reality itself. It is a prosthesis, or a substitute for what is real. Thoughts construct themselves to make reality simpler than what it is and to protect one from its perceived dangers. Insight is an occurrence when different thoughts are combined and cancel each other out, leaving one with a feeling that reality is larger and much more nuanced than one has previously thought. It is not a deliberate action, but rather an occurrence. One is not driving the insights. Insights occur when one is ready to accept them. They form as one matures and show one's own ignorance in a very loving way. Wisdom is made of insights that show reality for what it is. In a sense, insights and thoughts are two sides of the same coin.