Petals

Ramana Maharshi

go to the website by Michael James 'happiness of being' and download 'The Path of Sri Ramana' by Sri Sadhu Om for free. then you will know what self-inquiry is all about. without it one will probably always wonder whether one is making progress or not. I would say this: I think you had the right direction, but in the context of the practice of self-enquiry, thoughts are still objects / 'third persons' (as it's called). but self-enquiry is all about the first person. attend to that first person ('I') without giving the slightest attention to 'second' ('you') and 'third persons' ('he, she, it'). find out what that first person is.

this is a great addition:

'wanting to live' is not the same as the 'will to live'. I 'want to live' but I do not have the 'will to live'. without the 'will to live' nothing can truly be done. ••• 'wanting to live' is there because there is 'not wanting to die'. but the 'will to live' includes the 'will (i.e. willingness) to die'. // he who 'wants to live' does not have life but wants it. but he who has the 'will to live' has life because he chooses life. // he who 'wants to live' is (/feels himself to be) at the mercy of death and therefore also at the mercy of life. but he who has the 'will to live' chooses life and therefore also chooses death (i.e. is ready to die whenever and however it may come). ••• having the 'will to live' you have everything. without it, you have really nothing (but fear). ••• if you have the 'will to live' you cannot 'lose'. you choose life and therefore also choose death instead of being a victim to both. ••• this 'will to live', this choice, is the foundation of life. without it, one is not truly alive. inspired by 'Finite and Infinite Games' by James P. Carse. I made that distinction between 'wanting to live' and 'will to live' up, but I didn't know how else to put the feeling that I had into words. I hope that some of you could see what I wanted to point to and benefit from it.? feel free to comment.

the point of the exercise is to see beliefs clearly as beliefs and to see direct knowledge clearly as direct knowledge. the point is to put each instance in its proper category and not about verifying your beliefs in direct exp. e.g. your parents being your biological parents. you see it clearly and you categorize it as 'belief'. exercise completed. like that with every single point. ps.: DNA test could be fake or flawed but I think seeing your sister working at the bank would be good evidence that she is working there.? at least you would clearly know that she worked there for the time of your visit.

@PlayOnWords thanks. I also thought that they might eventually converge somehow which would makes sense. now that I think about it, 'create' and 'uncreate' must always go together. from a certain perspective they are the same. @Consilience thanks. I agree with all your points. It just seems that in CwG, 'God' seems to encourage one to spend the energy in playing instead of trying to become conscious of one's true nature. One probably must have read the book to understand what I mean. It is a book that is in line with non-duality but this emphasis on 'creating yourself' seems to step out of that line. so I'm trying to understand whether there is sth important to that teaching. other than that, if I think about it, whatever is created or uncreated by me cannot be me because that comes and goes while I stay permanent throughout it.

I've looked into Conversations with God again after some time. There it is constantly said that it is all about creating 'Who You Are' and 'Who You Want To Be', about recreating yourself in every moment. Then on the other hand there is Peter Ralston (or Vedanta - Maharshi, Nisargadatta) who basically says that that is the very problem you are trying to become conscious of: that you are 'doing yourself' and creating yourself in every moment and that if you stopped doing that, you would know your real nature, which is to just 'be' - 'real being'. in CwG, God even acknowledges in one paragraph that if you did not create yourself and your definitions, that 'you would be nothing'. but God emphasizes that you are to create yourself (maybe precisely because otherwise you would be nothing). So, what am I to do? to create myself or to uncreate myself, to be something or to be nothing?

as they say - 'it is not an experience'. it's hard to comprehend for me, but this teaching comes up so often that you have to take it seriously. then this right now is somehow the essential experience (or non-experience). any new experience would just more of what you already have.

Carl Jung even went to India more or less for the purpose of meeting Ramana Maharshi. At the last minute he decided not to go ..... I think he was clear on his goal. He wanted psychoanalysis and not Self-realization.

@Dwarniel sorry, my fault

oh, ok. but just using common sense I feel like he couldn't have said that. a) he is a professional philosopher, so it's unlikely that he would say sth as un-nuanced as that. b) he is said to be a psychoanalyst, so he must have a good amount of interest in the psyche and the inner. but what do I know?? edit: well, seems like he really said it. maybe precisely because he is a psychoanalyst?

I've googled the account and turns out it is a parody account. so he did never really say that. but you probably knew that and I only pointed out the obvious.?

a man named Lee van Lear's blog on inner work http://zenyogagurdjieff.blogspot.com/?m=1

thanks for sharing!! the intro by Gregory is also great to listen to.

a short and beautiful video.

@Shaun I don't really understand what you mean, but I would answer: of course there is truth to this. I think it is the basis for compassion. Spirituality is not solipsism. do you know 'the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows' youtube channel?

@Consilience thanks a lot for the detailed answer!!!

@Consilience would you mind writing a sentence or two about 'Do It Now' or 'Get Shit Done'? It sounds simple enough, but was there a specific insight that made them game changers for you? I'm just curious.

I think I haven't seen this TED talk already posted here on the forum. It is a great and moving talk. "I remember thinking there is no way I will ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body."

@Forrest Adkins if I understand you correctly you are trying to understand why it seems that there is an external world while at the same time it is said that there is no material universe. but maybe there is an external world, but it is just not made out of 'material stuff'. as Bernardo Kastrup sees it, there is an outside world, but that world is made out of the experiences of 'mind-at-large'. you yourself are a dissociated part of that mind-at-large. when you interact across the dissociative boundary with mind-at-large it presents itself in two ways - 1.) as the subjective experience of space and time you are having right now, and 2.) as an outside 2nd person view on that subjective experience, which looks like light bouncing off of objects hitting the eyes and signals being send to the brain. for clearer explanations you could read 'why materialism is baloney' or 'the idea of the world' by Bernardo Kastrup.

@remember thank you for writing this. what you wrote somehow really affected me although I haven't watched such content.

@Aaron p if I remember correctly, Ramana said that with each thought arising you should ask yourself 'to whom has this thought arisen?'. but I think first of all you should be clear about your expectations. what are you expecting to get from self-enquiry? be clear that there will NEVER be an answer to that question 'who am I?'. there will also never be an experience which will solve the question. "Recognition has nothing to do with anything that happens." -Franklin Merrell-Wolff

@Chives99 good point. if you think that you can win and as a consequence that you can lose, there will always be fear. all finite games are based in fear. paradoxically, true motivation can only come when you let go of the idea that you can win. I highly, highly recommend reading 'Finite and Infinite Games' by James P. Carse. It's my favourite book.

I can relate to what you are saying. when I experience a scotoma (you can google it), i.e. when a part of my visual field disappears, I often get the sense that the world is in fact a 2D screen from which my consciousness constructs a 3D world. this has nothing to do with enlightenment I guess but it at least makes you question the idea that there is a self-existent 3D space 'out there' independent of consciousness.

@fewrocker the 'Academy of Ideas' youtube channel has a few videos on Jung. + the biography 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections' is often recommended as an introduction.