Lilia

I have been reading Pavel Florensky - The Pillar and Ground of the Truth and savouring his articulation of Truth from a solid Orthodox turquoise perspective. On the forum, I've seen @Leo Gura mention Orthodoxy as the purest branch of Christianity. What grabbed my attention was illumination. Is illumination enlightenment? Or is it rather God-realisation? I would like to put together a list of books written from the perspective of Tier Two Orthodoxy. Would appreciate your suggestions.

@Someone hereCan I wonder why you created this topic? If you do hold the purposelessness of your being as a negative, why so?

As Consciousness, we get fascinated by the concepts invented. There comes a moment when the distinction "special" is created. Now it's time to bend over backwards to embody whatever the distinction entails! Just like you, I've also struggled with this concept. In my experience, a breakthrough occurred when I realised that I created the concept rather than learnt it. I saw it was empty, and uncreated the term. Although the mental component has almost dissolved, associated bodily sensations may linger. It's like with any addiction. Time will burn the remaining momentum, and it's OK.

Absolutely agree. Selflessness and love for yourself go hand in hand. Know thyself and love thyself - because there is no one other than thyself!

Zen writing! In love with your style.

In Matt Kahn's words: Love the one who wants to be special! Could it be the case that the one who wants to be special needs more love, not less? Edit: Even more importantly, love the one who does NOT feel special. It is Your love, God's love that this apparent one is craving.

For those who speak Russian, check out Anthony Surozhsky:

Thank you for your response. Do you happen to know the Russian translation of the term that would work for our context? Google suggests quite a few, but I don't think they are adequate.

I think it is an interesting question. In fact, I think there might come a point in evolution at which consciousness formed as human will no longer leech off other beings and will solely use the body to sustain itself. The configuration of such a body would have to be very different though, perhaps unimaginable today. But would not consciousness say then: "Why is it necessary to leech off this form I have created?"? We might say that 'leeching off' means sacrificing one form to sustain another. In a certain sense, that is reminiscent of what God does to create form, otherwise known as love. As above so below. There are descriptions of yogis who tend to eat very little - not because they are renunciates or want to make a point, but simply because there is little desire to do so, I guess. Or little need. Seen through developmental models, they are the cutting edge of evolution. Perhaps that is where every form is heading to.

I would like to understand genesis. To experience knowingly how the Great Nothing I am gives rise to apparent forms. Doing that in a human form would be nice. That has brought me to the study of the recesses of the infinite mind, sometimes called archetypes, of which the waking state mind is the cutting edge, so to speak. Have any of you guys directly accessed the archetypes underlying finite minds' formation? They must have been experienced by mystics and yogis throughout centuries, hence the consistency in descriptions from traditional literature. Resource recommendations are much appreciated!

@SQAAD I'd say the reason why you are struggling so much embodying the wisdom of "no free will for the ego" is that, on some level, you do feel and do know there is free will - because your experience tells you so! Time for recontextualisation.

That's an interesting observation. From my perspective, I would say there are more men among gurus - perhaps because spirituality is a business, and business is more of a malish thing. Also, here in Eastern Europe, where women have been downgraded to a role of a "man's companionship" for years, men are more respected and seen as trustworthy. Information coming from men sounds more "expert". There's even a phenomenon here that has become a meme: "a women's psychologist". That will be a man in his late forties, often with a pickup background, who would teach single women how to make men happy!

This is not the end. Now it has been recognised that free will from the conventional viewpoint is an illusion, time to upgrade the perspective: yes, there is free will, and it is precisely because of it that anything whatever is possible. Free will does not belong to an individual. It only belongs to God. And there is no difference between the two. It's just a matter of how you see it.

Thank you for sharing your view on that, kinesin. I wonder if Leo's assertions "what others think" could simply be a figure of speech, employed for emphatic effect. I bet he is conscious of the assumptions that his mind operates on. Perhaps some people get motivated best when being criticised. Others learn best from respect. But you cannot cater for everybody, you know. Yes, it is true there are no apparent others. At the absolute level, there is only one nothing. However, I do not think that should prevent us from exploring how consciousness "births itself out" in a way that we may conceptualise of as a variety of minds on a relative level. Relative truths are no less interesting than the absolute.

Hi friends. I have recently started interviewing the people I trust on their minds' content. I have been doing so because I noticed I am prone to generalisation, but wouldn't want to base my understanding of the relative world on false conclusions. So instead of asserting "most people are close-minded" or "most people don't question reality deeply enough", I decided to probe directly, as deeply as I could, to discover direct first-hand accounts that Consciousness that "be-s" other minds gives when it is self-reflecting. So for example, some of the questions I asked were: "What thoughts do you think when you're walking somewhere?" "What happens in your mind when you are challenged?" "How often, if ever, do you think about the purpose of life? "How often, if ever, do you question your own mind?" etc. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this "project". I would appreciate your answers to those or suchlike questions and also suggestions of other questions along those lines. I realise the mind is prone to self-deception and when it responds, it should be taken into account. Still, I think there is value.

@Batman Very interesting! Can we have a conversation about this "leap of consciousness" for a moment? It looks like we (Consciousness) do evolve in leaps. Conceptual representation looks like one such leap. Another would be an ability to identify ourself with a limited number of perceptions. I think identification is language-based. Would it be possible to carve out perceptual data if there were no language in the first place? I like to imagine what it would feel like to be the first and only human on Earth. Nobody pointing out "this is a bear", "this is daddy" or "this is you". Do not we conceptualise of ourself as an object simply because we are surrounded by "objects" that we are taught to call by their names?

@allislove Thank you for your reply.

More details: My research has been prompted by a discrepancy between what I hear Leo saying sometimes (e.g. "Most people do not question reality deeply enough") and the configuration of my own mind (I have always been curious about questioning reality). So I thought: "Do they not?" And so my field study started. One way to figure out the content of one's mind may be to watch their activity and induce the impulses that bring about such behaviour. Developmental psychology models have succeeded more or less at studying this link, but as @allislove said, they are models. No model equals the experience it represents. I guess my research boils down to me wanting to experientially verify or falsify generalised assertions about "normies" circulating in our culture.

I've come to think about the mind as the third-order phenomenon. It is a thought about a thought - and a thought is a conceptual representation of something that is not a something in its own right. It goes like this: ZERO LEVEL. Consciousness. LEVEL ONE. Perception. LEVEL TWO. Conceptual representation of perception (thought). LEVEL THREE. Conceptual representation of conceptual representation, or a thought about a thought (mind).

Thank you for your reply. Just as you wrote, the better you understand your own mind, the better you understand "another's". By that, I guess you meant you understand the principles by which the mind runs (rationalisation, denial, generalisation, bypassing, etc.) - please correct me if that's not what you meant. At a certain point, you may grasp the nature of the mind experientially (and from your message, it sounds like you have). But although the nature of the whole thing may be grasped, there seems to be "clusters" of idiosyncratic content, which seem to be - for the lack of a better word - attached to the bodies. Those clusters seem to be "worn" by Consciousness depending on the specific conditioning it has designed for itself. If you don't mind spending a little bit of time with me, have you ever wondered what thoughts arise in "other minds" that you, Consciousness, dream alongside the one that is engaging in this conversation?

Do not see tentacles. To me, it's more like everything consists of flickering dots on a static screen when there's white noise on it. When my focus is relaxed long enough (20 secs or more), everything kind of curls into everything until the whole scene goes blank. I can also hear a "default" sound when I am abiding in myself during the waking state. Rupert Spira has called it "the sound of a static object".

Hi allislove. Yes, it has been very helpful. Can I wonder how you think it is connected with my specific inquiry?

@inFlow Getting less reactive: that's something I've spotted as well. Before I discovered Kriya, I often resorted to a visualisation technique I learnt from Eckhart Tolle, where you have to imagine you're being transparent the moment you feel a triggering scenario is going to emerge from round the corner. With Kriya practice, it's become so much more effective.

I'm only three days into Kriya, and I must say I'm feeling very different. Gaps between thoughts are growing longer, and I can also use the mind more effectively when I'm being creative or have to work something out intellectually. But most importantly, I've started actually sensing that I'm part of something bigger on an experiential level. This morning I've experienced a profound sense of joy and bliss, which is hard to put into words. For me, it's a new kind of feeling. The happiest thing is that it seems to have been lasting for about an hour now, and there has been no mental chatter to back it up whatsoever. I stick with a 15-minute practice two times per day. It's definitely different from usual meditation. Been meditating regularly for about three months before I got into Kriya, inspired by Leo's latest video. Is there much sense in combining Kriya with mindfulness meditation? Excited to find out what comes next.