mandyjw

You need your ego to function in life, the know the difference between you and your refrigerator you need an ego. The same would be true for any society, you would need some structure to allow people to work and live together.

You are God, God can't stop you from being enlightened because she's you. There, you're enlightened. You no longer have a personality. That was easy.

@Mikael89 The universe- "Look at all this beauty, magic and aliveness! I made it for you. Just for you and only you, you're the only you that exists. You can be do and have anything you could ever want and dream, because you already are enlightened and fulfilled this very moment." Mikael - "Meh."

Sure that's really how it is, but that's no fun. God wanted to have a good time playing rock, paper, scissors so he created duality. That's why we have the ego, so we can forget that we aren't really separate and have a good time. The ego is a beautiful thing. Once you realize what it is and don't let it run the whole show of course.

@tecladocasio It has everything to do with awareness, or consciousness might be a better word. And it both is and is not a state. At a point these discussions become completely nonsensical, because every single word you can choose is of course NOT IT. For example you just created a duality between your conceptualization of ego and enlightenment, true and false. NOT IT. My head hurts. I need to go stare out the window in my enlightened state. lol

@Neorez Because you can only create your reality when you are conscious of the fact that it's not really real. When you think it's real you can't create it. There is no truth. That's the ultimate truth. Just focus on what you want. Reality is love and light and beauty if you focus on those things and manifest them. Or it's dark and nothing and meaningless if you focus on that, you'll manifest more of that. Your focus is all that there is. You keep wanting someone to tell you what life is really like, what truth is really like. You've disregarded the world of form as the truth, you've recognized that's not it. But you're still looking to teachers to paint you a new conceptualization of what it's REALLY like. There's no truth. There's no ground for you to stand on. There's no such thing. Just you and this moment. Feel whatever you want to feel. ' I choose love, beauty and light. You can choose whatever you want.

No one who is enlightened can ever really claim to be enlightened without being the devil. Because that means they took their eye of their dark side and denied it. Which means that's what's actually driving and controlling them.

@tecladocasio I can be enlightened, I can be a psychopath and I can be a self-conscious ego depending on my state of awareness at any given moment. I am nothing but a carrier of potential for none and all manifestations of ego including it's absence. You must know that you are capable of the dark side in order to choose the light side. Both are always with you.

So Jed had something to teach you. What do the other 7.53 billion people who are also manifestations of God have to teach you? You found just one aspect of the truth. One facet to the diamond. Why are you so drawn to the depressing, dark aspects? What is there in you that seeks out these teachings? Your experience of the truth can be whatever you want it to be. You're creating it. If it's not what you want that's on you to change it.

@Shin I'm sure you've experienced moments of enlightenment in meditation or life. Would you have been capable of harming another person or following through on an addiction in those moments of connection and awareness? In those moments would you not have felt yourself as completely one with anyone else around you, or if not around you would have felt no awareness of their existence other than a prevailing connection of love with life? Would you have felt any lack whatsoever that would make you seek out some substance? If enlightenment is a perpetual state of being and no self, either these people aren't enlightened or we have to redefine out terms and say everyone is enlightened. Of course Nahm is right, no one is enlightened except you. Paradoxically everyone is enlightened. That means stop caring about Osho or any guru you think is enigmatic, go visit some old person in a nursing home or go into hospice care and spend time with ordinary people without wanting anything whatsoever from them, and having absolutely no expectations whatsoever and you'll get far more out of it. The idea of a master or guru is an egoic projection. Every single person you encounter is a teacher because the teacher and student are one.

Psychopathy and enlightenment share a lot of characteristics. Part of the work of deconstructing the ego is realizing that in a way, only you exist, in a way, only your perceptions are real, there is no good and bad and you learn to go about your path and not care what other people think. If you practice and integrate those realizations without understanding the paradoxical flip side of them, you'll be a self made psychopath. The psychopath only cares about himself and so to realize that he's a psychopath he has to acknowledge the existence of others. So he proclaims himself a god, or master. Enlightenment is an experience of love and connection, enlightenment is the pure essence of love itself. Anyone who does not act out of love is caught in the mind. Anyone who tries to sell you a future hope of salvation and tells you are not worthy as you are right now of the kingdom of god is a false teacher.

@Shin Are you saying that someone can be enlightened and still completely blind to unenlightened or even extremely damaging social constructs?

The true part of you is but you split yourself so you aren't FULLY in the now. The now is not a concept. Enlightenment is not a concept. The experience is the thing.

You can conceptualize the present moment, just like past and future never exist as anything BUT concepts. To fully experience the present moment, there is no thought, not self. That's all enlightenment is. Just do that. When you stop doing it and feel pain, you know you fell back into thought and then go do it again. That's all there is. This work is not special in any way. I've run into old people who are 99% enlightened without knowing what the hell any of these concepts are or giving any thought to whether their brain actually exists or whether it's only a concept or whether or not if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it that it makes no sound. People did this all the time in the past without knowing what it was. Now that we have technology and have sped up thought so much we have to work harder and have to have exciting concepts like enlightenment and gurus to emulate to give us motivation.

@Truth Addict Suffering happens in your mind. A lot of it is future expectation of suffering. When you identify with the mind or with suffering you aren't in the now.

@Truth Addict If not now, when?

@EnlightenmentBlog I know that the you and the I is the ego. I understand what you're trying to tell me, but I reject and don't want that future state, because future is the barrier to my being enlightened. There's no such thing as enlightenment, you are already enlightened. I believe that what reincarnation really means is that you become enlightened, have an enlightenment experience, whether it's a passing moment washing dishes or an intense out of body experience, then fall back into thought again, process the experience, remember the experience, remember that you have to do the laundry and pay bills. An enlightened person can choose to think, and chooses thoughts that serve them in life and then they can choose not to think and enter presence. I have to have a "me" and have beliefs about reality in order to function and live my life. When they cause me to suffer I question them. When I want to be present and experience reality fully, I can forget them. They don't exist in that moment. The problem with many on this path is that they "wake up" out of presence and see the dirty dishes and identify with the them and the dishes being separate and they say, "oh my God, I did it again, I fell off the ox, I'm not enlightened". What that is is adding one more layer of separation and ego than was already there before! The only thing perpetuating that is the belief of future and expectation of a future state that doesn't even exist for anyone! I have no interest in permanently dying or killing myself before I die. I have an interest in playing the game when it serves me, detaching from it as much as I possibly can and enjoying the forms and things life gives me because I know the only way you can ever enjoy anything is by knowing that they can never fulfill you and aren't even real. I enjoy my perceptions. My perceptions are God too. I've already done this, I've been through it. I threw my ego in the trash and said, "we're done you and me." And then I started acting in ways that I conceptually thought a ego free person should act. I wasn't allowed to want anything, wasn't supposed to get too caught up in enjoying things. I still had plenty of negative thoughts though. I don't need to do anything or believe anything at all to evolve, my life is my path. Realizations are coming on their own everyday. I love this dream of form. it's all pretend, the other people I talk to and relate with are just a part of me, a mirror of me. But I love them and enjoy our interactions. The dream, the illusion the ego, the self the I is just this layer or veil of beauty. The mystery and not knowing what's all underneath or what may unfold is the fun in life. Life is a lot more fun when you stop creating a duality between your true self and ego. Just enjoy the moment. That's all that's here for you. That's the true meaning of dying to self. Don't you see you're seeking your self in the future?

This thread is amazing and inspiring! Lately I've been making memorial glass beads with pet and people cremains. The pet ones have paw prints, the people ones footprints. I used to have a lot more time for art but since I made art into my business I'm mostly an artisan or crafter with a little art here and there right now. That's the curse of turning a passion into a business I guess.

Well that just gave me a bit aha, epiphany moment.

I think detachment is a common pitfall especially for men because many have been taught to suppress their emotions since children and they never learned to integrate them properly. One big selling point of this work is that it makes you bulletproof or superhuman. If you started the journey trying to be more manly those traits are very desirable and it can be hard to realize that you might have to first learn to feel your emotions fully before you can integrate them. The shortest verse in the bible is "Jesus wept." He cried when a friend died even though he brought him back to life anyway. The idea that you can be enlightened and also completely detached and not care about other people is a complete fantasy. If it was real who would want it anyway. The work is about finding your soul not losing it. The good news is that sometimes you have to detach in order to learn that that's NOT how to integrate. I think almost everybody does it at some point or another.

@EnlightenmentBlog It makes sense what you said that there's an emphasis on suffering because it's an indicator of awareness. But I think it's mistake to focus on suffering and not use suffering as just an indicator. I think some traditions sell a hope that people can permanently break through suffering by bringing it on and seeking it out, it's that future goal of salvation or some special state that just doesn't feel true to me. Possibly because I already went through all that with Christianity as a child. Future salvation and hope of a future heaven is a really easy idea to sell to people. Heaven is now, available to anyone. Enter if you so please. Why is THAT message a harder sell? There's no beginning and no end, just presence. To the mind it looks like a journey and the journey is beautiful too, but in the end the journey is just a story and fiction just like our very selves.

@cetus56 Wow, that is excellent, thank you. This thread reminded me of some past conversations here about Jim Carey and how he just comes off as completely insane now that he's on a spiritual path. I truly believe that he is on the right path but he doesn't seem to realize that he can only embody it because when he speaks it he is turning it into duality. I did the same thing for years and continue to do it, but hopefully a bit less now.

"Hey mom, you and I are one and there's no past and no future, so YOU need to let ME go to this PLACE in the FUTURE to do this THING so that then I can be ONE with everything." If that doesn't make sense to you, it's not going to make sense to anyone else. The frustration with not being able to communicate non-duality to others comes directly from the fact that we tend to turn non-duality into dogma. Whenever you're trying to explain or think about non-duality, you are being dualistic. Non-duality is a dualistic concept, outside of its TRUE nature as a present moment experience of awareness, oneness and no thought. To seekers, these teachings point to that thing so they are useful to us and the language makes sense to us. If you are not seeking it's just utter nonsense. Try to explain it in terms of that you are seeking a certain experience or wisdom. Outside of that you simply can't explain it to them because each time you try you're falling into dogma yourself. Practicing it in everyday life and embodying it in your interactions with them is the only thing that has a chance of changing their minds. You don't need to go on a retreat for this journey. If you are unable to do a retreat that means accepting that that is your journey. You and the journey are one. Life is happening for you. Your family and their resistance is part of your journey. You don't need to do A, B and C to get there. Your family is dragging you down. You don't need to convince your family to let you do a retreat and do the retreat to get there. There is no there, you're already there. If a retreat is part of your journey you'll manifest the experience without effort.

@KP_Spirituality27 You have to go find a community with values like your own. Go to a yoga class. A lot of yoga teachers are young women who are very inclined to spirituality. And they LOVE men that do yoga. You might have to get over the fact that it's not the right kind of yoga, or if you're in a big enough area you will be able to find one that is the right kind of yoga. A spiritual organization of some kind, a very open-minded church? There are groups that get together to meditate. You could go to an Eckhart Tolle event, (women love him) or any event with some other spiritual teacher. There are different organizations that do hospice care or reiki, any organization that attracts highly conscious spiritual people. Don't do it just to meet girls, find something you actually want to do. Just being around people will help you and challenge you on your spiritual journey. You have to be around people first to even know which ones you like and want to spend MORE time with.

There's nothing real but this moment, you expressed that know that conceptually. You don't really need to accept anything. To experience the present moment, just focus your breath, what you can see, smell, taste and touch right now, the feeling of aliveness in the body. If it's too strong and you need more of a distraction, look out the window, go pet your dog, put on a song you love. There are many portals to being present in the moment. Those moments when you feel uneasy or bad are beautiful opportunities to remember to experience the present moment. Your mind wants to make it into a bigger problem than it is with a label and story and heavy words like regret or disappointment, it's not that. Just the mind being obnoxiously overly helpful again. Eventually when you stop feeding the story with more thoughts and learn to become present, the over arching narrative in your mind WILL change too. Don't try to put the cart before the horse.