winterknight

True , and that’s the paradox of the seeker, who has to maintain in mind simultaneously the contradiction of their seeking and their already being what they seek...

Glad it resonated

Do self-inquiry while you are working. Or set aside a certain amount of time during the day for sitting practice doing self-inquiry at first if you cannot do that. Do your work with the thought that you are doing it out of duty, and that you are not entitled to the results, that you are indifferent no matter what happens -- this is known as karma yoga. All of these are perfectly compatible with your work.

Well, all desires are nothing but being, we could say if we wanted Yup. Although chitta vritti nirodha (the stopping of disturbing thoughts) is ultimately something that only the Truth can do -- or rather that the Truth already is. In the presence of Truth, the vrittis aren't, even when from the outsider's perspective they "appear to be," in the same way that candelight ceases to be seen when the candle is placed next to the Sun.

In some very deep sense, that may be true, but for a seeker, the kinds of desire that are problematic are the ones that agitate the mind, which are only certain ones. Hunger is not a problem, but gluttony may be. Desires that are based on unexamined, unconscious cravings that are the big problem issue. A seeker doesn't have the option of avoiding all desire. Even the attempt to avoid all desire then becomes a desire.

Hrm... no institute in Orlando per se, but what I would do is call the Florida Psychoanalytic Center and ask them if there's an analyst near you who might be willing to do a reduced-fee arrangement. There might be someone who is willing to work with you to a large extent.

If there is an institute nearby you can find it much cheaper through treatment with a candidate... what city are you in, if I may ask?

It sounds there are other desires which you need to be honest about and pursue first. There may be parts of your life you're neglecting, or feelings or emotions you're not admitting to yourself. This is what psychoanalytic psychotherapy and/or what I call the 'science of desire' are good for -- for becoming more honest about what you want, and not what you think you should want (not even spirituality).

Well that's because you're trying to understand it intellectually. Do self-inquiry relentlessly... look into the "I" who is trying to understand. There is another way of knowing that is not intellectual understanding.

If there's speculation there's a thinker. Thoughts imply a thinker. But the very idea that there is speculation may be erroneous. From the spiritual standpoint, both these positions are wrong. All positions are wrong. There is a silence within which questions like these are seen to be, in a sense, meaningless.

My belief is that psychedelics can be a useful and cool way to open up, experience some mystical states, and perhaps integrate psychologically -- but that they are not a substitute for the rest of the spiritual path. Yes, an allegory is a thought. So it definitely implies a thinker. Not that it isn't fun to speculate.

Well, it's a nice thought that true atheism can lead to God in a weird way, but I think you are getting caught up in this whole nest of confusing arguments about labels. It isn't helping your journey. It doesn't matter what you label yourself. Let go of trying to figure out what to believe or not believe. As long as you are open enough to look within, that's all that matters. The real truth is beyond theism and atheism. It is beyond words, ideas, and, thoughts, and can only be discovered directly. Focus on self-inquiry. If you are open enough to look deep into yourself, that's what matters.

Sounds like a bona fide glimpse. Don't be satisfied with glimpses, though, but intensify self-inquiry (or start it if you haven't started, since I don't see it mentioned in the journal)... Necessary? No. Why would you think that it is?

Go into psychoanalysis. Your emotional problems likely stem from your unconscious, and you need to spend time and effort to bring them into consciousness so they can be dealt with. Psychoanalysis is the best tool available for that.

Well, talking with your brother is great, though it's not anything like analysis. They're both valuable but in very different ways. Talk about your feelings and listen to his. Emotional truth is what it's all about. Where are you located? I can check if there are any analysts nearby.

Sort of, but not really. Shadow work is a very specific term that comes out of one school of thinking and that has all kinds of associations and meanings. It's better to talk about the unconscious rather than the shadow. And it's not just what you could do on your own, but with another person. A relationship makes the whole thing fundamentally different. Psychoanalysis is a form of getting to know yourself, and particularly your unconscious, in a relational context.

Psychoanalysts help people understand themselves better. A large part of the seeker's quest is understanding themselves better. Whether things are an illusion or not doesn't change that. You're in emotional pain and confusion. If you want to grasp spiritual truth, that must be dealt with, and psychoanalysis is one of the very best ways.

Don't get life coaching. Life coaches often know nothing about the human mind. If you actually want to understand yourself, visit the real experts and go into psychoanalysis.

Very true.

Yes, analysis is far more specialized and intense than regular therapy. Contact the William Alanson White Institute or NYU Postdoc and ask for a referral to one of their candidates (or if you can afford $$$, to a training analyst). And since you have specific philosophical questions about epistemology and metaphysics, feel free to ask on my thread and we can chat about it.

Your confusion stems from unresolved emotional issues. It's very hard to solve them by yourself. Get help -- go into psychoanalysis, which I recommend to all serious seekers.

Well, if you want an absolutely insane literary masterpiece, more like a gothic novel than a typical history, read Carlyle's History of the French Revolution.

Transcript: So there’s a frequent fear among spiritual seekers about “if I relax the mind, or if I engage in deep self-inquiry and turn all my attention inward towards the Source which is aware of all the thoughts and actions, who’s going to do all the things that need to get done? Who’s going to figure things out? Who is going to decide what the best course of action is? Who is going to take all the decisions, make all the moves that need to be made for survival or for happiness or for anything?” Because you might think to yourself, as so many seekers do, all the spiritual seeking is great and all, but I still need to get out there and do things. And who’s going to do those things? Where is that doing going to come from? Where is that decision-making going to come from? But there’s a great and extraordinary paradox which is at the heart of spiritual truth, which is that all doing, even right now, even when you think you are in control of your actions, even when you think that you are taking important decisions, all of it, all of it is happening essentially by magic. It is all happening from the indescribable source. All of it is being generated from there. There is simply a misconception that we have that “I am doing it.” That it requires my effort. And what’s paradoxical is that when the magic goes through this misconception, it produces less interesting results, really. When the mind on the other hand is able to relax, when it is able to let go, to surrender, as a result in some sense of some form of inquiry, of some sort of looking within, when that happens, when there is that total relaxation, where one doesn’t lift a mental finger, and there is complete effortlessness… You know, there’s a beautiful phrase in one of the ancient Hindu scriptures, it’s called the Ashtavakra Gita. It’s a dialogue between the wise man Ashtavakra and the king Janaka about enlightenment. And Ashtavakra says, the one for whom even blinking is a bother. Someone that, you know, you might say, lazy in a sense — that relaxed actually, it’s not laziness. That person is happy and nobody else. So at that level of relaxation, that level of utter, total delight in just being, what happens is, strangely enough, that creation happens. It doesn’t necessarily happen in the way that you expect it to, and it doesn’t happen on the timetable that you expect it to. But when the expectation and that timetable are relaxed, when that anxiety is gone, when there is total relaxation, something emerges. When it emerges, how it emerges, what it does, no one can say, but the creative urge manifests almost without your noticing it. Faster than you can see it, when your attention is directed elsewhere, something happens. And that’s the great mystery and magic of the mind that is quiet and centered in its own nature, that is utterly relaxed, that one is simultaneously in a position of pure transcendental bliss regardless of what happens, regardless even of negative emotions, that there is nevertheless a transcendental bliss that flows through it, and that simultaneously when and only when one is enjoying this transcendental bliss is a space opened for something magical to do its thing unburdened by the usual set of expectations that would cabin it. So try this. You’ll find it out to be true, only I will say try it with this one caveat, which is that you can’t keep watching it. You can only notice it in retrospect. It’s like the idea of the watched pot never boils. Or someone who’s trying to go to sleep can never go to sleep. You must relax the mind and utterly let go of expectation, and then you may find, looking back, that things happened that you couldn’t possibly have expected, that you didn’t put any effort into. I don’t mean the world necessarily responding in some magical way, although that might happen, but that creativity came out of your own bodily and mental instruments in a way that you could not possibly have anticipated and that was in a sense, a strange sense, effortless.

You mean on politics and American culture? Robert Caro's massive but brilliant biographies of Lyndon Johnson and Robert Moses are excellent. Democracy in America is classic -- Tocqueville, a French observer, captured much about American culture in a way that's never been matched.

True! Some great points here. You are, I'm sure, absolutely right that there is a resentment of those with higher educational status, and you also made interesting points about being able to speak to people with lower levels of education in the way they understand. Donald Trump is documented to speak in 3rd or 4th grade language -- not out of calculation, but because he can't help it. Steve Bullock, one of the few Democrats who has consistently won in rural areas said that there's no magic formula for winning rural voters: Dems need to show up and try. They largely haven't. So that's a critical point too. There's a great book called Anti-Intellectualism in American Life that shows this resentment-of-education issue has been with us since the nation's founding and before. Prior to the American revolution, for instance, George Washington and Ben Franklin, farmers themselves, approached other farmers with scientific knowledge from Europe about how to improve crop yield. This wasn't some fancy abstract philosophical knowledge. And the reaction? "Our forefathers have done it this way, and our forefathers' forefathers, and if it was good enough for them, it's good enough for us."