Aakash

@sleepyj my brother; that was a classical piece of literature. i can't complain or argue with that. This is why the only solution for me was to seek out enlightened master, maybe this term means buddahood, and so i will accept that i am deluding myself for the time being. thats the things with degree of enlightenments that your not even sure where your at! thank you for this debate, i really enjoyed myself and getting to hear your points of view. do you have any questions to ask me?

@Joseph Maynor lol thats a good way to put it, but i'm not trying to use the language, i'm trying to point to the actual thing. so does that make it buddahood/ enlightenment is my question

sorry about that i'm done editting it

non duality = there is not two but one true nonduality = there is only [must be left blank because the word is only a pointer] words would include nothingness, emptiness, awareness, consciousness so true nonduality is the true self the true self is buddahood for me, the true self is the thing that you are, the only thing that is real in reality the thing that the one is made from without any distinctions being made what this thing is, is your true nature but you can know it to many degrees the different degrees are the different degrees of enlightenment nonetheless the way we define enlightenment as seekers is a realising or recognising of the true self the very thing that i am. to recognise it you have to quite the mind is this not buddahood?

i get why self inquiry is the royal road to enlightenment now; but theres one thing i don't get, why is it that even though enlightenment is finding the true self that self-inquiry enlightenment doesn't match up to buddahood in comparison terms? i agree you find the same awareness in both methods but buddhist traditions overall have a more structured embodiment system that you just can't get with self-inquiry what's your thoughts on this?

@sleepyj i would say i only have fetters 7 and 9 that get me, but even then its because i haven't read much about the fettas and understand them that this is only a quick judgement. and maybe recently with 8 because of my realisation itself. but my point still stands, i think you can become an enlightened individual without going to complete buddahood. buddhahood is a lifestyle in my opinion, sure the consciousness levels there are crazy high and in time with the present moment. but you can become enlightened on different level. still there must be one thing that holds enlightenment in place is the realisation of the self.

@Jkris they're basically categories of delusions that one can trance themselves in becoming attached to these delusions is what causes suffering and therefore the 10 fettas are about suffering and working your way through each fetter completely ensures that your delusion doesn't come back, because by its own nature its falsehood. reality is like an illusion creating machine so to speak, anything you think of with your mind will turn into an attachment and delusion will follow, even before the attachment the delusion comes the fetters destroy the mind and the illusion that is the mind and thats the end of individual self, well supposedly, because mind insinuates there is a seperate self. without a mind there wouldn't be thought, emotions, feelings, past , present , future, now, words, language, object , a subject, distance, time , space, attachment, duality. there wouldn't be any of this. revealing how the minds function works shed light on it. but becoming a mind without attachments is for masters of enlightenment

yes i have cleared the first fetter, many people on this forum have. personally, i have realised the true self. however, if i had to put it in fetters terms, no way have i cleared many of the fetters and still ignorance will get me at many turns. but either way in the end the delusion is still a delusion and the self remains the self ... hence the reason i wrote this post on how to become an enlightened MASTER. i haven't embodied the values really well on my journey, still remanents of the self remain but i don't doubt that i have realised buddah nature so to speak. maybe that makes me a bodisattva. question: can you explain the 2nd fetter to me.

@sleepyj THANKS i've always been wondering the dynamics of the fetters, i couldn't grasp them but now i totally understand, its amazing the realisation your giving me right now and how deep the attachment to things can go. i guess arhat means perfect buddah then, just like enlightenment and then theres enlightened masters. the buddah himself had to make a path to perfect his enlightenment would you say a person can become enlightened without going through a complete ego death or reaching the stage of arhat? by enlightened i mean understand the true nature of self i think i also magically understand why leo goes through so much self-deception checks to make sure he's not creating any

@cetus56 that video is amazing! point-proven right there, just have to find your thing! CHICKEN IN THE CORN

@sleepyj wow those were very nice insights, i tried to follow the eight noble paths just for the past week, there was an incident where i had been lying (a very old lie from months ago) that became back to haunt me. i told the truth for this very reason of the path and i came to understand that i didn't have to worry about it anymore, you articulate your words very wisely, you must really have studied buddhist tradition wholeheartedly. are you by any chance an arhat yourself?

@Joseph Maynor i agree, its like the end of the hero's journey returning back home, I couldn't see this part of the journey whilst i was wound up trying to save the world, and rid the world of its low consciousness. i used to think that it was the job of enlightened people to do something extraordinary like the buddah. as for the hero's journey part. i always wondered why the hero never went back to the village and spread the word about this amazing adventure and the trials and tribulations a person went through. but now i understand better after leo's video of what a cult is and i'm much better off for it. the end of the true hero's journey was at the end of the journey. when he went back to the village there was no need for him to start another journey because he became fulfilled and content with the journey he had already been on , he had fought the dragon or found the holy grail. this is synonymous with the master then returning to normal life and then as the master of his skill set. if a student were to ask for help, he would guide them. not because he knows best and went and sought out the opportunity to teach the younger generation but because the younger generation helped seek him out or he sets up a dojo a place for those who seek to come to him in guidance of the skill.

@cetus56 @Jack River i'm keeping a word document of everything people say for my journey :') i've written your helpful comments and insights about creativity and carlos santos on there! thank you so much.

@sleepyj i am leaving the forum to master the presence of awareness/nothingness ( i am pure awareness, but more i mean master a particular lifestyle) after today for a good while, i have been on here for 2 months daily. so i would like to hear your opinion on each of them to soak up as much wisdom as possible if you have the time. the first one i would like to hear about is correct speech and correct mindfulness

@ajasatya Thank you dear friend i will most certainly read it as much is needed to understand the book genuinely.

@Shadowraix A life of non duality, sitting neither side of the fence. and recently i've started to think that its a quite mind. i normally use the mind the react to social situations and thats about it, then intellectually to do my work

@sleepyj this was most certainly helpful, and i am definately interested in your view, please continue.

@cetus56 ill definately remember that on my journey, i don't know who he is! but ill check him out thank you cetus.

Thanks these two months i've spent on this forum have been amazing getting to know everyone and literally so many of you have helped me out. so many people i personal messaged aswell and some even spammed (you know who you are). I think it's time for me to get even more serious about the work ahead, and leave this caccoon/ incubator, FLY LIKE A BUTTERFLY. its not bye forever, ill definately be back once in a while, but for the next couple of months need a self-actualised.org forum solo retreat as the pun/joke would go. Hope i've managed to help random people aswell with my random contemplation and monkey mind threads i'm sorry if i reply too much/ post too many things for anyone who got annoyed with my content. SOZ I hope you all discover what ever it is you came to actualise.org to find / for those that are regular members, keep sustaining that community feeling we all feel on here, able to speak minds and all that lastly, thanks mods- you've been a great help to me on my spritual journey, i'm sure you'll keep doing great ALL member on the forum have, you never going to know where you'll find a piece of information that will just make it all click in your head for you. and of course thanks leo for creating such an amazing platform for people to come together, it's really nice being part of an online community, GOODBYE kind regards aakash

@Shin ahhh wants i forgot! the first devilish desire of ego , that would literally send me right back to the beggining. thanks for the reminder

@Leo Gura Thank you, clear and simple. ps. i know better than to take the 20-40 years literally, just a long long long time

@Jack River you made that point vibrant, thanks i learned something new

@cetus56 ahh i misinterpreted it slightly sorry, yeah it really is a beautiful thing if your able to do it, i think another one for me is, drawing a stunning piece of art with oil paints, oil paints are the shizz when it comes to enlightenment, you can draw some pretty loopy things. so have you got anything planned, if your thinking about it. to be honest if i got to your age, i wouldn't be thinking about shit, just being right here, right now and enjoying every moment! LOL

@TheAvatarState sorry i misinterpreted, damn dualism. definately. i'm contemplating right now what an enlightened master is, i think its a person that has realised and then has dived deeply as you've said thats able to bring on spantenously the emotion of love and happiness, have you had experiences of being able to do this? someone who has studied all the pitfalls and traps.

i'm with leo on this one, my greatest help from realising on this whole journey was the fact that i never believed i was the human body, i believed in a soul of some sort, or an energetic feild , or i even believed that god was in me from the age of 14 onwards. if i had believed i was the human body and nothing more besides neurones and stone cold believed it, i would have been completely locked in a materialistic paradigm mindset, but my mind is naturally tailored towards metaphysical/spiritual/paranormal phenomena and although it can be dangerous and difficult to maintain a normal mindset when reaching adulthood. it has made all the difference in my quest for what is truth and what is real. not sure i would say that your the entire universe because that may be difficult to understand, but just explain it in the sense that you become the food you eat, the air you breath in is used by you, that your body breaks down into soil and its a natural process. i guess i'm explaining it from a material paradigm as opposed to a metaphysical one.