Preetom

How can you defend that absolute political correctness if you don't know something? Mustn't you know?

How can that be? How can something be simultaneously existent and non-existent? How are you holding up this contradictory knowledge? doublethink?

@okulele Thanks for the contribution I feel that this technique self-inquiry(being aware of being aware) needs a lot more recognition and clarity. It is the cure for the fear of death and the sense of lack and unworthiness. The kingdom of heaven is available right here right now

Good for you! But is there anything other than the real You? what is that?

Are you getting the security you crave from this attempt to be correct? How is this strategy flying so far?

@Mikael89 Are you trying to become the most politically correct non-dualist in the history of this spirituality business?

Bentinho's one of the primary teachings: Voluntarily stop yourself and drop all attachment to form for 2-5 seconds, at least 12 times a day and tune into that sense of nonlocated, formless, undeniable sense of I AM

Do concentration meditations if you feel that mind is really distracted or it feels dull and bored most of the time when doing self inquiry. Breath awareness all throughout the day helps a lot in this case. If you feel sufficiently calm and alert, self inquiry or abiding as Awareness is the highest meditation one can do. You seem to be already in a good position. The next step for you could be to not confining self inquiry in a particular sitting routine but to try continuing it throughout the day while doing other activities.

Lmao

This line of questioning reminds me of how the attempt to get political correctness with mind which can't be grasped in the first place, leads to more and more confusion and conflict and never towards the lived realization. Just like how the Hindus and Buddhists bust each other's nuts over the true self and no self arguments lol

@Rigel Being aware of being aware and self inquiry are literally the same thing. It is about turning attention on itself by skillful means like being uninterested in thoughts and objects or by a question like who is aware? This contemplative meditation leads to self realization. On the other hand, meditation in the general sense facilitates the opposite direction of attention. it's about focusing attention towards a single object like breath or a mantra. These concentrative meditations lead to more focus and mental resolve and a quiet mind which ultimately prepares one for the contemplative mediation like self inquiry. The 2 methods complement each other. Self inquiry brings the breakthrough. Concentration meditation prepares the ground for it to happen and stabilizes the realization.

It goes much deeper if you think about it. The very concept of desire assumes otherness aka a separate self. If you desire food, there has to be people making it. If you desire and love entertainment(let's say TV show), there are people making it. Even if you desire 'nature', that assumes something other than you and needs to be a certain way. Literally anything you desire needs to fulfill an infinite number of parameters to be fulfilled itself. No wonder no desire is ever truly fulfilled! The ultimate solution is not a state where your desires are completely fulfilled but to clearly see this broken system and thus transcend it naturally.

Couldn't agree more! The best teachers never had a fixed set of instructions presented as the absolute law. They almost always took the teaching in the opposite direction of the seeker's beliefs in an attempt to bring him out from his nesting place..

@Serotoninluv The only 'true' statement(if there is such a thing) is I AM. Anything more is redundant and can be traced as being another belief..

@How to be wise What if planning ahead is part of the whole package that comes with the 'Voice'?

find out if you were born in the first place...then worry about past and future lives maybe.

@Anton Rogachevski My take is 'Awareness' or The Absolute can't be verbalized or categorized. As a theory and practice, it is helpful to take Awareness as unchanging. But when direct experience comes forth, all labels has to go and does go if it's a solid awakening. The concept and the label of 'Awareness' itself goes as well.

@winterknight Reading Sri Shankara's Vivekchudamani or many Advaita Vedanta texts, one primary instruction that comes over and over again which is ''constantly abide as the Self". This instruction seems to be simultaneously the path and destination. Vedantic texts generally don't give any exotic siddhic meditation, breath patterns or a set of morality or any objective life purpose for the seeker. The only instruction is to remain as the Self and not be bothered by anything else. How do you interpret this instruction? How should this instruction be followed by a seeker?

A fixed sleeping, eating, bathing, cleaning routine and schedule. After that, developing block time/hourly 'work' routine.

For the sake of brainstorming ideas, how about taking a spiral approach to break free the rut...seeing what seems to resonate the most. A basic overview like this. Stage purple: joining a cult and becoming a devoted fanatic. As one gives up one's life wholeheartedly to the tribe, his own problems eventually evaporate away. Stage Red: setting up a goal and going all the way on impulse, not regarding conventional logic and knowledge. Stage blue: making a set of values and principles. Then taking them as absolute truth and following them regardless of the outcome or circumstance. A stoic life where exercising the values and virtues is reward in itself. Stage orange: "the only obstacle between you and your goal is your excuses and stories"--believing in these alpha mantras and go for the goal. Basically constantly shame, guilt, outcompete yourself...depending on all the negative(inauthentic) and external motivations. Stage green: relax the ideas about material results. The measuring stick becomes how soft, loving and accepting one becomes to oneself and those around him. Stage yellow: thoroughly educating oneself about himself...making calculated 5, 10, 15, 20 years plan by regarding oneself as a systemic project..then slowly implementing that plan. Stage turquoise: leave everything and doing 1-2 years of constant self inquiry until Enlightenment happens and the next chapter gets revealed on its own.

Sounds like the classic perfectionism trap. The visions and idols are so lofty and fantastical that it is impossible to start small and holding that patience for long time without sidestepping. This is another downside of too much 'knowledge' and having things 'figured out' in one's mind right from the start. What is there left worth pursuing? Wish you good luck brother

Yes that's how it is designed so that we preciously get sick and tired of it and wake the fuck up to see that none of this sham has anything to do with us. It's to prevent us from preventing from nesting and making a home in this temporary playground. Developing this systematic chronic dis-satisfaction for the mundane reality that everyone else seems to conform to in a gullible manner, is one of the recurring and pre-requisites for a true spiritual search to begin most of the time.

''Give your attention to the experience of seeing rather than to the object seen and you will find yourself everywhere.'' ''The greatest discovery in life is to discover that our essential nature does not share the limits nor the destiny of the body and mind.'' ''Looking for happiness in the body, mind or world is like looking for the screen in a movie. The screen doesn't appear in the movie, and yet, at the same time, all that is seen in the movie is the screen. In the same way that the screen 'hides' in plain view, so happiness 'hides' in all experience.'' ''To invest one’s identity and security in something that appears, moves, changes and disappears is the cause of unhappiness.'' ''Total openness, pure sensitivity, unconditional allowing: this is not something you, as a person, can do; it is what you, as pure Awareness, are.'' ''The separate self is not an entity; it is an activity: the activity of thinking and feeling that our essential nature of pure Awareness shares the limits and the destiny of the body and mind.'' ''All experience is illuminated, or made knowable, by the light of pure Knowing. This Knowing pervades all thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions, irrespective of their particular characteristics. We are this transparent, unchanging Knowing.'' -Rupert Spira

''Why don't you be you(in the mail box), and I be me(on the other side of the screen)''

this is spot on. Everything was unnatural..until it became the norm