Ayla

Yes

Meditation is a tool. A tool to remove programming. In fact, not to remove it, but to SEE it for what it is. It can also be a wonderful tool for the ego to infiltrate into some kind of a spiritual path, where you continue with your sh*t but you feel better about yourself because you are meditating. Meditation is NOT a pre-requisite for enlightenment. You already ARE.. THAT! Meditation is a tool for people that cannot see their thoughts for what they bleeping are: THOUGHTS! In my view, honestly, all those monks, those years..etc only serve to separate you (whomever you might be) from another "more evolved" being that had so much inner power to do this or that... PLEASE! Now there's a danger to this: that you take all this and apply it to your silly little construction and you go around mentally affirming things that serve that mind. Nothing wrong with mind... only, it is not at all YOU ! It's still as illusory as it can be. Last question: Is illusion separate from THIS? ****** Confused yet?

Something comes up tonight. Sitting with the discomfort. Spiritual quotes and teachings being thrown around all over the place, without any understanding of what they really point to. People getting confused by this or that... people running away from really sitting with those teachings and just throwing them around where and when they fit their self agenda.. Have you ever heard of a very famous teacher called James Christopher? The one that taught about the planks and splinters? I was looking into the plank tonight, exactly as JC taught. Deeply sitting with the confusion of it all. Deeply looking for the plank in the eye. Can YOU see it in your eye? When you see a splinter in your friend's eye, don't you go give advice to him, but know that it is your own plank you're seeing there. First go home and look in the mirror. see whether what you were really seeing was a reflection of a plank in your eye. Once you have taken that plank out, then you can go back to your brother and see whether there truly was any splinter in his eye... PLUS you get rid of all the planks!!! And now for the BIG QUESTION: " Would it be OK if for the rest of this Earthly life you were to be picking out planks?" Ayla's sitting with the sadness of not many understanding any of this.... but Ayla's nowhere to be sitting. <3

@Extreme Z7 yes, interesting, thank you

Can an illusion have a problem?

You are none of that. There is a mind there, linked to some cells that are called neurons, that have a "known" path to manifest that way. This is as clear as clear can be. There is A mind and A body. All you need to do is to find through direct experience right this moment, if there is a director of them in any way shape or form. One of the key questions here is: "Asides a THOUGHT, what tells you that that mind and that body are YOU?" and " If you are not THOSE, who are you? where are your limits? Where do you see those from?" If you are somewhere OUT there and cannot be grasped, how the heck can that be YOU? ....

The only difference between this moment and "nothingness" is the direct experience. What I mean by direct experience is the physical senses, with no meaning (of the neuronal paths) attached. In other words, remove what it is felt through body and what it is thought through mind. That is nothingness... and that is who you really are

Remembering and experiencing is only for senses. When there is no sense - no body and no brain, what is there to remember?

Have you ever considered each day... whether there really is a yesterday (or is it memories projected backwards, assumed, as they seem to explain how we might have arrived at THIS)... and whether there is truly tomorrow (or is it projections thrown forward to wonder how this might extrapolate forward into an imaginary future)? or is there only today, the rest being in the imagination....? the past and the future being nothing but a construction....a kind of attempted explanation for the feelings. sensations, the thoughts, the images coming up to day... an attempt to run away from an imaginary bad past towards an imaginary better future.... THIS could be seen as recovering from an addiction to doing exactly that Have you ever consider extrapolating that to dimensions - 2D, 3D...? All constructs. THIS is what remains when they drop. THIS is I.

Enlightenment is very similar with looking for the glasses on your nose. It is really just that. Seems VERY simple when you've found them, even silly, but if you don't know where they are, you keep looking for them anywhere you think you might be able to find them. The reason you can't find it, is exactly because you are LOOKING for it, when in fact, IT is already what you are. What is tiresome ( and supposed to be that way) is that this requires sometimes years and years to exhaust the mind. To put it in a corner and make it admit that it cannot find anything at all. Mind, emotion,physical sensations, they all are manifestation on the soil that you are. Or are you? That is why one can read and read and study for years, without understanding that there is nothing "out there" to be found. All intellectual knowledge is useless. Even what I am typing here. It ends up stored somewhere for a few moments or days, until the next thing comes up. The reason why so few attain enlightenment, is because people get lost in this eternal search. It becomes a way of life. Their lives are bearable enough not to force them to push forward with REAL questioning, no matter how many thousands of hours of meditation... Mooji says it like this: "You want to taste the honey but not to be the honey". In other words, there's a profound, complete letting go that must happen. Most people that are enlightened nowadays, have done so more or less unwillingly - through suffering. How much can you let go of without suffering? Can you see that as soon as something seems to hurt, you stop the search and begin searching for yet another shortcut or another master or whatever? Also, enlightenment isn't an end all be all. As someone dear to me says, "we're all in recovery, as long as we live". The difference is that whatever comes, only grabs you by the hand and not by the throat.

Language is always going to be "dual". "I" is just a word. When you look up a word in the dictionary with awareness, you will understand that "I" is just a word that is explained by other words. So in that sense, no, "I" isn't a hindrance. Nothing is. You just need to look into your direct experience and see if you can find that which you currently call "I". Realize that it is only a concept. Like Santa or Unicorn, that is being imposed onto your perception through mental patterns and physical sensations. Had this issue a few months ago. It is yet another trap "you" chose you believe in, in order to avoid the uncomfortable dissolution of the construction of your life as an "I", entity, unit, whatever you want to call it.

Think back at yourself at 5 years old. Do you remember yourself being afraid of something? If you could go back in time, what would you say to yourself? Exactly my point. He may appear "grounded" and "not threatened" but his reaction clearly shows that he didn't receive your genuine help too well. Why do you think that is? Really think about this. See beyond appearances. Would his reaction make sense IF he was scared for his position? IF he saw in you someone more fit to take up his job? I mean reassuring him that the fact that you tried to impose your idea, wasn't "against" him. It was just your way of saying that you believe in what you proposed. Propose to him to work as a team and to share instead of competing. It is built in a human being to help others. Look outside. Imagine a lost child in front of your window. What do you do? Without any training at all ..

@PiotrW There is another way of looking at this, something that I call "love language". Is it possible for you to see that your friend C has responded to your actions with FEAR? Can you translate it all into: "Joseph, your actions and ability to solve this problem are making me doubt myself and I feel my position in the company threatened. I'd like to have a go in solving this problem my own way so that I too feel capable and worthy". Can this be true? How do you treat a child who is scared? Nothing is done in life against others. It is only done so that we feel better. Fear has many masks. Ponder this. Think about it, and adjust your reaction to it. You'll be surprised by the outcome if you respond to the inner fear C is showing, and not to its outer manifestation.

Dealing with physical pain and or disability. Not long ago, I had to suddenly deal with some physical disability that was so overwhelming that it had to become a priority. Here is what came out of this experience, sharing it here in hope that it would help someone. *go to the doctor if so inspired. ******************************************************************************** There are two aspects: Pain is bad. This where brain switches as soon as it feels something that is even remotely uncomfortable and or out of comfort zone. Have you ever thought that pain is the way body is healing itself? What if pain wasn't BAD, but the SUPREME good that comes up when healing begins? Slowly move mind from thinking "this is bad" to "this is healing", "this is GOOD". Focus on area of pain/discomfort/numbness etc. Love that pain. Experience the healing that is taking place. Be as grateful for it as you would for any potent medicine. Pain affects ME. This is the trickiest subject I've even tried to externalize. I'll only focus on it from pain's point of view. You need to first understand that this here is a very advanced spiritual practice that needs to be exercised. Once you are sure that "pain is not bad for you" - which is relatively easy to achieve, look at the "problem area" - either directly, or with a mirror. just look at it as if it was a picture or a 3D model. You may also take a picture. I'll take the hands and feet being numb as example. Do not think of any of the consequences that implies for a moment. Just look at hands and feet. Numbness is not bad. Let that sink in. Mind will tell you that you cannot walk and cannot grab a fork...let go. Focus on the image of hands and feet being there. Is there anything other than a thought telling you that they are YOURS? If so, be explicit, write it down or speak it into a voice recorder. Don't go back into WHY this has happened and don't go forward into how this is going to affect you. Focus on the healing taking place for those hands and feet in the NOW. Describe the feeling (numbness, pain) in as much detail as possible: tingling, contraction, hotness, fire, antsyness, pulsating, etc, be inventive, search dictionary. This will de-mythify the idea of pain and make it crumble into more collapsible sensations. In the end, it will look like that: "healing is taking place through antsiness and tingling in hands and feet" - as opposed to "my hands and feet are numb and I cannot move or eat or etc etc.." Start with little aches and discomforts. Go slowly, step by step. NOTHING BAD IS HAPPENING TO YOU. Good luck

This video might help you with that type of question.

@Lha Bho How would I know? Or anyone else? And why? Maybe whole planet would disappear as it was its purpose to get everyone to see through NO SELF and then BOOM Leo's videos are quite good at explaining that whatever you resist or moralize or judge, will persist. Now from that point of view, without resistance, none of what was once resisted will have its purpose and disappear... probably, or not. Who knows these things? Life lives itself moment by moment so those are not concerns to a new society of enlightened people, because... there would be nobody there that could ever die, disappear or be hurt. Inspiration about what you'd like to do after seeing THAT may come at any moment and may change at any moment. Like the wind or the wave. Do you think LIFE values more a bee than a flower? A waiter than a musician? It doesn't work like that. Life just flows. Like a river. Is a river hurt by a rock in its path? or a tree falling after a storm? It is just being shaped continuously.

Like this one, without the suffering.

Both are true. From consciousness's perspective - who you REALLY are - there's nothing YOU can do or have to do. Now can YOU, the one reading this position yourself as the consciousness? Or do you see yourself as a person "doing meditation" and incorporating yet more tools and information and ways.... and operate from that perspective? As Leo says above, only when "personhood" has miserably failed to bring you to the truth and has declared FAILURE, consciousness will be able to shine through, and you would realize that you were always THAT.

There's nothing YOU can do cause there is NO SELF to do it with/for/to... Now once you experienced THAT, you stop engaging in the drama and stop projecting into the future. You just live whatever comes. Choosing still arises, but it is like choosing a game from a drawer full of games. You know you're not going to become millionaire or own houses and hotels and make others go bankrupt by playing Monopoly, but you might still enjoy playing it for a while. Then attention goes to another game, and so on. The seriousness of engagement with what you once thought was so important, fades and dissipates. There is no you doing anything at all. Life plays itself through a mind and a body... Nothing of what you now think is true is actually real. Like Monopoly. All that being said, it is very difficult - if not impossible to understand this, even intellectually, from the "person's" (egoic) position, because a person cannot have trust in life - it will always fear collapse of some sort and react against or resist whatever is feared. I'd also add that this is such a typical mentality for our society right now... get yourself enlightened and then pass on to the next bullet point LOL.

Please ask yourself carefully. No room for jokes or sloppiness here. Really sit down and see for yourself. Try to predict the next thought. Is there a YOU there, doing the thinking? Just calmly sit down and look. Can you prevent the thought that you are hungry? Can you prevent the thought that there is a You doing the thinking? "Here I am!" Can YOU prevent that thought? At all? If that is a Thought, who is the thinker of it? Is it you? Both the thinker and the thought? Sit down. Close eyes. Breathe. Prevent a thought. ANY thought. ********************************** I'd like to ask for any and all to not post quotes or ideas or videos of any master or book. I'm looking for direct experiences here. Personal ones. Only express what comes.

Still sounds to me that there's some kind of a "central focus point" ( I ) that can or cannot do, allows or doesn't allow... I perceive some type of a resistance still there. ( "let it happen" ) The "I' IS the happening in different shapes and forms we humans like to label as... a bee, a tree, a hand, etc. These things DO exist, but not in the conceptual frame we like to put them so that they fit our definition. This is also the case with "I" we have a definition of it and we stick to it instead of seeing that a definition is just a way of explaining a word through other words. That is why, the only way to see through the "I" is to get rid of all concepts and only look at the experience.

@MartineF , if you try to figure it out like that, with your mind, it IS a mind game. I was talking about direct experience. Find out what is perceived as real. Leave mind questions behind and stick with the FACTS. The only thing that is real, is the 5 senses. They come attached to thoughts/labeling which are also real, having a "neuronal" identity - in lack of a better term - attached to them. (what the thoughts are ABOUT, isn't real - for example, you cannot smell a flower. flower is a concept you attach to a certain form of matter) Now what/who experiences the 5 senses and the thoughts, has to be identified through direct questioning.

This right here is what creates the separation between NOW and a FUTURE when everything will be fixed and perfect. The perpetual search(er). On the other hand.. what's wrong if life wants to continue searching? :-)

What is in fact happening if you look close enough, is that thoughts appear. Don't know where from, don't know where to. When someone watches their thoughts through any type of technique: meditation, mindfulness, etc... they are able to recognize and "brush away" only up to a point, where a more "sticky" thought comes. That sticky thought, all of the sudden, isn't being recognized as a thought but becomes a fact: experience if it is associated with physical senses truth if it is associated with concepts already present. The idea of a focal/central point seems the hardest to see through because it combines both thoughts and physical dimension. Unfortunately, even with the thousands of pages that have been written about Enlightenment, no matter how hard I - or anyone else - would try to explain, it is only through focus and honesty that one can discover for him/herself that there is no "I" behind all these masks.. It is just LIFE playing itself out in different forms