Da77en

I know this, they deliberately turned away from their wealth because pretty much everyone was poor and it wasn’t relevant at the time. Poor people usually won’t just listen to someone talk about spirituality if they are living like a king.

They all lived in times where pretty much everyone was poor.

Power, money, etc. can definitely help spiritually. It’s how the power and money is used which makes the difference. The materialist paradigm might be helping the more religious and scientific type people take more action to get into places of power. There’s this idea many spiritual people have that you’re not supposed to engage in the world and are supposed to exclusively focus inwards. You need a balance of worldly engagement and personal persuits.

Good conversation, thanks.

Thanks for clarification. I agree that any word isn't it, any word is just an offering and a guide for someone to gain direct experience. @James123 All I will say that these distinctions are probably where you might be getting confused. If you know something you are conscious of it. We could just use the word Knowing and never talk about consciousness and it would mean the same thing. And if you are not defining Self as Consciousness I'm not sure how you are defining it, Nothing is consciousness. My perspective of the term nothing is that nothing is just another way of saying formless. Just remember that consciousness is also “everything” which just means all form. Consciousness is both formlessness and all from. It’s not one or the other.

Consciousness is the same as knowing. Being is the same thing as consciousness. Illusion means you are misperceiving the nature of something, any kind of illusion means you are misperceiving a certain aspect of consciousness, but consciousness itself is not an illusion. In order to misperceive something, you must first be conscious.

Please explain. Are you saying that consciousness not existing is the truth? Consciousness and truth are the same thing. Only one thing exists and it's consciousness.

Any conversation we have is just thoughts, concepts, and ideas until it's a direct knowing. You think consciousness itself is an illusion? Just look at your experience, that's how you prove that it isn't. You definitely can't prove consciousness to anyone/anything but yourself. Anyone or anything you talk to is just consciousness. You can't prove that anyone else is conscious but you can prove that you are. Consciousness proves itself.

Consciousness itself is definitely not an illusion, it is real and is the only thing that exists. The illusory aspect of consciousness is time, space, and the idea that anything can exist "outside" of consciousness. Nothing exists outside of consciousness, the "outside" reality is all generated within your consciousness. Only the experience of the conversation is real. Technically now is "before birth" because there is only now.

If experience wasn't aware of itself there would be no experience. In order for there to be an experience it needs to be self-aware. Experience is almost synonymous with self awareness, in fact it actually is synonymous with self awareness.

Experience is self aware, you can experience. There still is "you" it's just recontextualized as "you" being consciousness as opposed to being any particular form, the body, mind, personality, etc. You are experience because experience is the same thing as just saying consciousness. Thanks for the conversation I appreciate it as well.

I experience it 24/7. But it's not just the idea that you are no form or nothing, you are also all form. That's the entire package of consciousness. No-self doesn't mean no-consciousness. All of the other mechanisms of consciousness still exist, you have just realized the illusion of the limited self.

There is still you, you are consciousness. It's just that you have recognized that you can't pinpoint yourself to any particular form. No-self doesn't mean no-consciousness.

Consciousness is self. You still exist and can move towards something that resonates or move away from something that doesn't resonate. You are underestimating the fundamental role choice has. Even when you aren't operating from identification with form, there is still choice. The mind is not some entity that you can listen to or not. The physical personality and mind was never alive or something like that, it's always just been consciousness. Some people are using the idea of no-self to dissociate from consciousness itself.

Exactly. Even if you are totally surrendered, you can still have preferences.

There is no such thing as failure of passion from my perspective, the state of passion is the point. Whether or not specific things come to fruition doesn't matter. I know that if I take action in a positive direction from a positive state, positive things will happen, that's all that matters to me. I have nothing else to do and might as well do something that can potentially result in ecstatic changes.

I don't attach myself with the insistence anything has to come to fruition. The actions in the direction of making a more evolved world don't generate any suffering within me, only passion. I probably don't kill many ants while walking, ants probably have a better time than most humans.

When you talk about total existence, no dimensions, beingness I think of the inevitability of the present moment, or other insights that go into the formless nature of consciousness. I agree with that you will see more clearly in your daily life and interpret things better, but I see this simply as a foundation to continue expanding your consciousness, not necessarily the end point. The idea of transcending the intellect which buddhism is focusing on is great but I don't see that as the end of expansion, just a good foundation.

Exactly. Action and change is part of the perfection, not an exception to it. Everything we are doing right now is part of the perfection but that doesn't mean you use the idea of perfection as an excuse to not live how you prefer. If you want to live how you prefer, unless you are already in alignment with your true nature, it is going to take a lot of action. The actions I'm talking about are not just towards the world I'm talking about the spiritual practices as well. It's just that most of the world probably wont get significantly into spiritual practices if they are still caught up in lack of abundance, materialism, religious indoctrination, fear based ideologies, etc.

@James123 Yes, that state is your true nature, but no. Most of us are in states of being out of alignment with our true nature. If the fears and misalignments are not addressed your true nature will not happen automatically, once you clear out the misalignments it will indeed be automatic, but then there are also more expanded levels of it that you can achieve.

No, but life goes on and you "fall" out of those states if you haven't sufficiently cultivated them. If only like 5% of your life is full of those states what's the point?

Yes, and I have experienced states of ecstasy and love so profound that it is obvious that there is no other option than to expand in to such states. In order to to so you need to take action in that direction. Most of the collective has just exploring states of lack of abundance, stress, etc. This is because the education systems have brought us up to think of everything through materialism and stage orange type ideals, in a very distorted kind of way. Basic abundance hasn't even been fully achieved yet, so many people even in the United States are living paycheck to paycheck. No one can do everything alone so it's important we come together to start talking about solutions to such misalignments and take action.

You don't need to try to change anything, change is automatic, action just guides the automatic changes of your life in whatever direction you take action in. If the Self is not important, what is. The individual personality identity is not very important because its just a mask, but the Self is. Most people just don't have any idea of what the Self actually is and how amazing it is, because they are too caught up in their limited identities to start experiencing their actual nature.

Yes, exactly. The world you are responding to is none other than you. So why make a distinction on changing the world and changing yourself. Perfection doesn't mean you take no action/don't respond to the things happening.

@James123 I have heard of that quote and agree with it, however, the societal structures are a reflection of your consciousness and if you only focus on improving your individual physical self there are things you wont become aware of. The simple action of responding to what is happening in your world in a positive and constructive way expands your consciousness and makes you more aware of particular changes you need to make within your individual self. There definitely needs to be a balance between focusing on your individual growth and responding to things happening in the world. If you focus too much on one or the other I feel like you limit your overall growth a lot.