winterknight

This is exactly why it's a bad idea to talk about what enlightenment is like. It leads to all kinds of misconceptions. No, this is a total misunderstanding. Don't try to understand what enlightenment is like in words. Read the scriptures, spend time in the company of spiritual teachers, and look within. Stop worrying about whether the enlightened person plays roles, etc. This is a total waste of time.

You must be willing to spend your whole life on it, and perhaps many lifetimes.

No, but one can become so that all questions are seen as meaningless. (Well, actually, perhaps one can become one who knows the answers to all questions -- that would be God.)

Glad to hear it! You're very welcome. I don't generally talk about my own experience, because it's so misleading. Physically the actions I took didn't change all that much, except that I started teaching. What matters is the psychic reality, which is both so simple and so indescribable. Because in truth I do not do things at all. I do not do things, I do not experience things. But that is incomprehensible unless one has touched something beyond the intellect. So it's really pointless to try to explain.

Best to look into who wonders about these questions. No answer in words is ultimately going to satisfy.

It would not be nearly as good as in-person, but it would be better than nothing. The problem is that it seems to be very rare.

A very short intro talking about analysis vs. other therapies.

It's true, in some places it can be difficult to access... I don't have an easy solution to that, though I'll give it some thought. As far whether the therapist is good, that's why I advise people to go find an accredited psychoanalytic institute near them and to ask them for a referral. That is some measure of quality. When you have a session, within a session or two you should feel like you're getting something out of the process. And if you have other issues, bring them up with the therapist and see how they respond. That will tell you a lot.

Well, if the point is that you personally want to go deeper into your spiritual journey before trying to fix the world, I’m all for it.

Great stuff, and it explains a lot. Scofield doesn’t have the courage to publish with her own name, and she is never published by any reputable publication. And she was even banned from medium.com! Wow. That’s for a reason.

Yes, it's a good point. The truth is that spirituality is full of these paradoxes, and necessarily so, because only through paradox can the mind reach its own boundary. For the seeker, they have to treat themselves as appearing and deciding, as provisionally real and actively exerting effort to seek -- but this effort goes towards trying to contemplate the meaning of the great spiritual statements to the effect that no effort is required, no seeker exists, there's no one who decides, etc. If in fact no seeker exists, then there is no question of deciding not to go get therapy, for example. Deciding not to go seek therapy because "I don't exist," is itself the decision of the person that supposedly doesn't exist. So can one decide not to decide? No, one cannot. So as long as one is seeking, one decides, even as one tries to contemplate what it means to say that one is not actually not deciding.

What specifically have you read? Of course you wouldn't spend decades pursuing something you don't understand. Why not approach a guru and learn from them?

For a seeker, there is a difference between change from a position of love (meaning trying to feel the other to be genuinely important and independent) and change from a position of, say, selfishness (seeing the other as a kind of object.) Seekers are told to strive towards the first and not the second because that quiets the mind and the quiet mind is key to the search. But as far as whether one can only be effective in changing the world after experiencing the truth, I wouldn’t assume anything like that. Truth is not being about effective in the world, though it may or may not seem to result in that. Truth is about Truth, and that’s it.

The moment you speak a word, like "knowledge" or "sense of beauty," you enter the world of words. In the world of words, questions where "where does it come from?" can be answered in many different ways, depending on the context, the purpose of the discussion, the discussants, and much more. For example, evolutionary biology has an answer. Religion has various answers. Literature has answers. The spiritual doesn't have answers to these questions; it transcends the world of words.

If you're accepting everything, can't you accept a desire to change things too?

Depends on the perspective of the one asking the question, depends on the context of the conversation. The kinds of wars you're grouping together are radically different. What you're really just asking is: do things exist? Let alone wars. From the seeker's perspective and in that context, the only useful answer is: there appear to be wars and other things, but they are in fact all nothing other than Self. What does that mean? It means hold on to who's asking the question, stay in self-inquiry at all times, and there you will find the truth.

You sound confused. "Chasing girls" is not the trap, the confusion is. You mention depression and loneliness. I recommend to all serious seekers that they get psychoanalysis and/or psychoanalytic psychotherapy (it's a specific kind of therapy)... and in your case I would definitely recommend that. Follow these instructions, find a good psychoanalyst, get into therapy, give it lots of time, and then you will be able to deal with and see these resistances for what they are.

But that is just a thought.

This is the common sense idea, but that’s because the common sense model of knowledge is dualistic — split between subject and object. Contemplation is a dualistic mode of knowing Being knows itself by itself without needing the duality of contemplation. The ingrained belief that you are a separate entity.

There's a bunch of intellectual theories I can give you if you want, though they're all varying degrees of wrong. Still, they are helpful at a certain stage. The reality, however, is that these questions basically arise out of a misconception it is the purpose of the spiritual path, and specifically self-inquiry, to dispel.

All those questions and distinctions are also in thought.

Good idea, will have to try that. Interesting!

As an experiment, I just transcribed it and added it into the video description. Yeah, probably won't do that on a regular basis, but I will certainly keep writing things on my blog, and that will serve the people who learn better by reading (and I'm one of those people, definitely).