VeganAwake

Like ? ❤

What about preferences? It's been conditioned to prefer the good over the bad, happiness over the sadness, love over the hate, knowing over the unknown. "The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion for or against. The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind". -- Sengstan, Hsin Hsin Ming

So there's a direct correlation between an alert conscious mind and suffering. But when there's a thought about making a delicious sandwich for lunch or giving my son a hug, suffering isn't occurring then right? So what is it about the conscious alert mind that causes suffering?

Do you suffer at the doctor's office when under anesthesia? Does someone in a state of unconsciousness suffer?... like being a vegetable or in a coma

Exactly kind of like this.... but don't worry the ego doesn't turn into an owl

It creates all kinds of stories about how bad things will get... don't listen. Stop feeding it ..Starve it to death. It will re-inflate over and over again for a while... but just like a balloon that got re-inflated too many times, it gets weak and eventually no longer holds air. ❤

It's real and unreal. Real in the sense that its experienced that a separate individual suffers. Unreal in the sense that the suffer isn't actually there. So its actually a misidentification with thinking and bodily senses.

Haha yes it wasn't specified psychological or physical suffering. Not just labeling but Identification. Physical pain occurs in the body and is identified with as 'my' pain leading to possible psychological suffering on top of the feeling of localized pain. So suffering typically stems from identification with conditioned thoughts(my thoughts) and localized pain in the body(my pain)

Yes, a thought arises no chips and beer = bad. Identification with this thought creates an apparent lacking or bad experience for 'me'(suffering) No chips and beer is neutral.... it's neither right nor wrong.... the fact is there's just no chips and beer. So the conditioned thought identified with as 'my' thought created the apparent suffering.

Yes the body seems to get effected. What is the source of the suffering?

Yes exactly there's nothing To make of it...❤ Whether you get caught up in the play of life or not doesn't matter at all.... Because it's a play/dream. When death occurs, all the good the bad and the ugly disappear just as when you wake up from a dream at night. So might as well enjoy the dream while it lasts or not either way it doesn't matter. And if there is a higher source dreaming the dream.... that also doesn't matter because it's a dream ?

Concerning Liberation, nothing matters is the highest recognition period. It takes the wind out of the sail, blows the ship out of the water and chops the legs off of every other possible concept that could be identified with. With that being said, it's usually(99.9999%) misunderstood... and ego is very cunning and can sneak in the back door and take hold of this recognition quicker than slime on a snail. The thing is, Liberation can be pointed to all day long.... but it must be recognized/seen there plain and simple. Look and See(not with the intellect) Who could suffer? Where would the suffering take place? Who or What is suffering? ❤

These last 2 posts are classic examples of the importance of being able to empty the glass and unknow. Saying Awakening or Enlightenment should be one way or the other prior to it actually occurring is like telling your teacher which grade to give you prior to taking the test. Good luck and let us know how that works ?

There is no 'me' or 'you'. The ego and higher self are both illusory identifications stemming from the same source... identification with thinking.

Self recognition is the death of the seeking energy/seeker that believed something needed to be recognized. Typically what happens during half-assed awakenings, glimpses or mystical experiences is that, it feels so uncomfortable to be in freefall / free float, that the sense of self or ego immediately tries to rebuild itself and becoming identified as the true self higher self consciousness God... whatever floats the spiritual egos boat. There's nothing right or wrong with it, it's just what seems to apparently happen. ❤

“What is already” is nothing to the “I am” seeking energy, which is looking for something knowable. As the “I am” and the experience of real separation are illusory and what is truly longed for is never lost, any personal search to overcome separation or find what is already, is utterly hopeless. A perspective arising out of an illusory „real“ separation will suggest, that personal effort such as being aware or more aware, being conscious or more conscious, being in the now or being present can lead to the end of separation. These suggestions in essence take the seeker prisoner. Confirming the hope, that what is longed for will be or could be found through personal effort. However: No experience, realization, or process of becoming could possibly lead to the dissolution of the already illusory experience of „real“ separation. The “I am” is hopelessly and choicelessly trapped in a dream of personal process, in its’ efforts to find something for itself, thereby missing what is already: unrecognizable freedom. The end of the “I am experience“ is the recognition, that there never was one. Real Separation is a dream. With this recognition, the need to compromise with the seekers' expectations of becoming, naturally also ends. The assertion, that what is truly longed for would or could be found as the result of a process, is revealed to be completely misguided. Nothing leads to „what is“ already. Non-separation is never realized, found, or known. But can be recognized by no-one in the falling away of the illusory experience of real separation. The end of seeking is not the fulfillment of the individuals' need for answers about what life is, what death is, nor is it the satisfaction of the need for meaning and purpose. It is the end of the need to know, which is the end of questions and search for answers as the causeless end of the questioner which never was". -- Jim Newman

"the greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it's the illusion of knowledge" The mind likes to put things in a box and check it off as being known, so it can move on to the next box to check off. This quote points to: when you believe you already know something, the mind tends to subconsciously skip over it without inquiring deeply enough... this is why it's often said to become child like, as if looking at something for the first time. This is why the middle path is so often referred to with Enlightenment work. It's not about landing on one side or the other... staying emotionally neutral during deep introspection. Open and grounded simultaneously sorting through the wheat and the chaff like Leo says...? ❤

Leo, I nominate Marinador as a new mod...?

A very similar experience occurred here after months of spontaneous meditation periods(every 2 hrs or so) I woke one morning with a still mind and noticed everyone running the rat race and completely tangled in what I refer to as the socially conditioned mind matrix. They seemed as slave robots completely identified with there conditioned minds and completely unaware of it....it was shocking and yet ordinary because I completely understood what was going on. Simultaneously it was recognized that this ME character I believed myself to be was also a consequence of social conditioning....it became loose like a house of cards and collapsed. Just pure luminous emptiness is what was left and also recognized as having always been the case. This is Samadhi Enlightenment Liberation Nirvana ❤

"Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretence. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true". -- Adyashanti

When it's recognized there just isn't a right or wrong path to begin with the idea of spiritual bypassing becomes irrelevant or non applicable. There aren't correct and incorrect ways of doing it.... and it's way too free and radical for the mind to grasp.

Like Leo says awareness alone is curative. The ego isn't something to demonize because it isn't real. It's an identification with habitual and conditioned patterns of thought which overlay an illusory self centered experience on top of reality.(what's in it for 'me' mentality) These three videos are fantastic in helping understand:

I did psychedelics like 20 years ago... There were periods of time when the minds constant analyzing judgment or thinking(monkey chatter) just wasn't happening.... there was just Being. The experience here left a subtle recognition of what was possible. The minds constant dialogue became more fluid and manipulatable sort of speak. It also became less valued than before. ❤

"The solution is not to fight for peace or conquer nature, but to simply recognize the truth; that the very existence of the ego structure creates duality, a split between self and other, mine and yours, man and nature, inner and outer. The ego is violence; it requires a barrier, a boundary from the other in order to be. Without ego there is no war against anything. There is no hubris, there is no overreaching nature to create profit. These external crises in our world reflect a serious inner crises; we don’t know who we are. We are completely identified with our egoic identities, consumed by fears and are cut off from our true nature. Races, religions, countries, political affiliations, any group that we belong to, all reinforce our egoic identities. Almost every group that exists on the planet today wants to claim its perspective as true and correct, as we do on an individual level. By claiming the truth as its own, the group perpetuates its own existence in the same way that an ego or self structure defines itself against other". -- Samadhi (Maya illusion of the self)

Totally...it seems to hide by being everything ?