Consilience

The book The Mind Illuminated. Everything you need to develop an incredibly robust practice. From there, you can begin exploring, but foundation is key.

It makes no sense that Absolute Truth would be conditional. If what is true is ABSOLUTELY true, it must always be true regardless of circumstance. If what’s absolutely true is that reality is perfect, then that’s what’s true always.

Technically no. The kicker is that it was always perfect. Yet, it can still be hellish for those who think they’re awake if life decides to give them a strong dose of reality! Still perfect… as heart wrenching as that may be.

Not many. And even those who are have an infinity of eons left, yet, it’s all ready, already complete, whole and this. Pure, primordial paradox, patiently playing. Pure perfection, already there.

@4201 Just now seeing this post, thank you so much for the shoutout Really interesting ideas proposed here! Of course this all would need to be tested in a lab setting to verify but it seems like extremely sound logic. More generally, this idea that psychedelics create the new pathways but those pathways need reinforcement seems to match my experience as well. Thank you so much for the write up, high quality post

There's nothing to apologize for. This is actually not something someone else has said, my own analysis after reading/listening to hours upon hours of various spiritual masters both dead and live ones, as well as hours upon hours of my own meditation practice, psychedelic trips, contemplations, and observations of other sentient beings. Funny enough, your rhetoric sounds like some kind of classic Neo Advaita bs. Just a hunch as well though. Again, if the conditions of your life radically shifted you would be eating these words. If you think you've seen through the illusion of suffering, I would challenge you. I hope life never puts this claim of yours to the test in your own experience, or if it does, I pray you have the inner resources to meet it with the consciousness you claim. Ultimately, only you can face life's pain and the ultimate teacher, death. I wish you luck as well.

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That’s the thing, you aren’t being honest. If the conditions of your life radically shifted, you’d be suffering. The fact that you're ignorant of this is itself suffering. All the stories you say and tell on an internet forum don’t mean shit when the real rubber hits the road. By transcend fear I mean let fear filter through experience without experience fighting with itself, which entails the cessation of resisting the resistance towards fear. Feeling fear so deeply it’s seen to be utterly empty, fleeting, free, and impersonal, along with death and pain, an authentic (honest) seeing that reality was never fighting with itself. Thinking the work is torturous is just a game of the ego mind. The ego mind wants nothing more than to avoid the conditions which give rise to its end. This is beautiful, wondrous work. And in fact, there is no choice of whether it gets done or not. All karma. The act of sitting down to meditate is a movement of reality, the grace of God. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been bestowed this grace - it is not only for my benefit, but the benefit of all sentient beings. If you think you’re done, can get away with believing your way out of it, cool. There may not be consequences now or in this lifetime even, but this too shall pass. All the love.

It actually doesn’t. There are literally some materialists who don’t believe in consciousness. Also, materialism rests on the existential assumption that there are objects, space, and time. All of these are deconstructed when deeply investigated both from a position of serious intellectual epistemology, but more importantly, as a matter of direct experience. Science can be magical for sure, but science is not materialism. Materialism is a belief system created out of the false narrative that our contemporary scientific literature demonstrates there is a physical world, ONLY a physical world. This, however, is no where to be found other than in the mind’s of those interpreting and observing data.

What have you “gained” as a result of your practice if no glimpses? What do you define as glimpses?

Not difficult at all to hear. I don’t feel particularly complacent though, my own practice is going extremely well. What Im pointing out is just a sticking point, a place where resistance can arise which is “damn this path is a lot of work.” While I see and acknowledge what you’re pointing to, this doesn’t resolve the suffering in life, or fundamentally transcend the fear of pain and death. Doing the work does that. The idea that there’s nothing to do and to take it easy can very easily be co-opted by the ego into avoiding facing such existential realities, such as the magnitude of and resistance towards such suffering. For my own practice, Im not aiming for perfectionism. Everything is unfolding exactly and only as it could. Thank you for the feedback though. Edit: moreover, it’s not just transcending fear - no amount of taking it easy will replace the authentic consciousness of truth, of directly experiencing reality. The paradox is that what is true is already true, regardless of effort yes. But if you aren’t conscious you aren’t conscious. How does one become conscious? Doing the work which makes consciousness more likely to become conscious (meditation).

Taking on the emotional hit of practicing. I mean realistically, the first 10,000 hours of meditation is still just warming up to accessing the possible domains, states, and insights of mind. Im glad I didn't realize just how deep “the path” went when I started, it would have been incredibly demoralizing. So a big sticking point is becoming complacent, lazy, and not meditating because of all the emotional games the mind plays with resisting meditation practice. The good news is it takes relatively little time (relative to the extent of the overall work and effort) to start reaping enormous benefits of practice.

The mind fuck is the tension is you’re unconscious micromanagement of the muscles. Why can’t you be present and happy as you are? Because you’re all tensed up and unconsciously suffering. Not specifically “you” but most people. Great post!

You’d be shocked. Running can be a form of spiritual and personal growth too.

Lmao Totems

Actuality

???

If you don’t seek enlightenment, you’re fucked. If you seek enlightenment, you’re fucked.

??

I prefer the question “What am I?” Ive exhausted the who question. Im more interested in the ontological investigation “What am I?” Which I suspect most people are actually after when using the “Who am I?” question, both are useful for this purpose though, ultimately. To address the thread’s title - what is the purpose? To know what our existential nature is. When we keep asking who/what we are, we may begin to notice many things about experience. For one, no matter what we experience, there is always the experiencing of it, so naturally, experience cannot be who/what we are. ‘What’ is experiencing experience? Secondly, as we question, we may begin to notice that experience is never static. All feelings, emotions, self referential though, sensations, perceptions, etc. are in a constant state of expansion and contraction, or arising and passing. There is nothing static, or formed about experience at all. If we’re truly perceiving reality as it is, we would experientially recognize that the moment we’ve placed attention onto an object of form, that form has already contracted and given rise to a new, completely fresh and totally unique new form, yet upon recognition even that is now gone. We can see through a deep paying attention there is literally nothing in existence. Everything is utterly new moment by moment, so it is quite literally impossible for what we are to be anything at all because quite literally, ‘things’ do not exist. Eventually the question takes us to the context out of which experiences arise and pass, expand and contract, the context where the primordially feeling of “I am” resides. That context becomes more palpable than the field of dancing, impermanent form and yet is seen to be inextricable with form. This context is pure, liberated, potentiality - the space wherein all comes and goes, moment by moment. Buuuut that’s about as far as Ive gotten… ha. Still going.

This is great.

The path is pathless. Practice is the practice. Experience exists within the universe; the universe exists within experience.

Yeah these type of small premonitions seem to occur more frequently the more we’re “tapped into source” haha. It’s interesting for sure.

?? So much wisdom within so much concision and poetry.

This. Not only are you owning your sexual intent towards her (ie being honest), you’re respecting what she said. A double win. If she seems like a good friend, yeah by all means! But if you’re really into her, but honest and don’t manipulate your way into getting her re-attracted. If that’s what it takes to get a certain girl interested… eh. I’d personally look for someone else.