UnbornTao

Survival demands turning everything into a positive and negative, pursuing what you want and avoiding what you don't. This shows up as a struggle. Also, the presence of death lingers in the background of our experience; this fact is actively pushed away and resisted which also comes up as a struggle no matter how much it is ignored, and being happy and joyful is possible amidts this struggle.

Opinion, either mine or another's, is irrelevant but you know that. In any case, no state can ever be permanent as that goes against its nature. A state comes and goes. Based on hearsay, a genuinely awake teacher like Ramana was said to be blissful even when the circumstances he was in were extremely barebones, such as insects biting his legs, when all he did was sitting in all day. What's up with that? We may not really know what happiness is. What if it is independent from self-survival? What if it is already the case and synonymous with being? I don't know. This hopefully opens some doors for us.

Consider struggle as a fundamental principle of life. Keep looking into this, you might discover something.

"Insert anything here"

It isn't about answers, agreement, conclusion, desire, conviction or belief, and nobody has.

Yeah, played the trilogy on PS3, good memories. Fair enough.

What I'm hearing is that anger is done by you for a purpose. You want to feel angry (or sad, bored, any other emotion), and so arguably you want them to happen -- feel attracted or drawn to doing them. The rest of what you say sounds like nice-sounding rhetoric.

Why the rhetoric and show? What is he trying to get across? Where is he coming from? What is the communication doing, whether it sounds good or not? Seems geared more to sales than to simple communication.

Am I truly Batman?

Missing out is a function of desiring what you don't have. In life you have to get clear on what you want and make decisions. You can't do nor have everything. If you go this way, you won't go that way. Pursuing a course of action means you won't be pursuing something else. For you to create anything at all requires commitment and discipline. This already means part of your attention and effort are invested in that. You could also not commit to anything and thus remain bound to your temporary impulses, but the direction of commitment is the enlivening one.

Reminder to be honest.

As long as it's taken as a tool, it's okay. Although it isn't about consciousness.

Hey, don't go so fast. First we need to directly know what reality is. By grasping its nature then the question of how it is created might be answered organically as a result of the direct consciousness.

Those are good questions to contemplate. Remember to leave the matter wide open: What is experienced/experience? What is concept? Consider the experience of a pencil: pick one up, then take away all concept you've got of it. What is that object for itself, with value, use, meaning, and function stripped away? This leaves us with a fundamental not-knowing about what anything is. Now, it might be possible to grasp what something is for itself, yet this possibility would go beyond intellect. I'm currently inquiring into these things, too.

Yeah that's what I've heard of the first one too. II is a pretty demanding game but may be playable depending on your PC if quality is set to Low/Medium and certain settings are turned off.

Let us know the challenges you encountered when this period is over.

If I slapped you in the face you'd immediately stop the intellectualising.

First clarify what you want to communicate. Why are you going to talk in the first place? The shortcut is to simply get clear.

Take away the rhetoric and hype and look for genuine experience. Are they trying to facilitate you in grasping something, or are they selling you beliefs? This will leave most people out.

Uses hype and superficiality. There are other effective teachers out there such as Adyashanti.

It is a conception of it, not a direct experience of its nature. It is an indirect encounter so to speak. As an inaccurate analogy, a map represents, models or symbolises a piece of land, the experience of standing in that land is "it." At this point it'd be better to call it something else, like concept or thought rather than map. Map seems to be a specific thought that models what something is or how it works so that a workable relationship can be established between you and what the model tries to represent.

The premise of the question is mistaken. Get who and what you are.

Then your questioning should be open, based on nothing, rather than on preconceptions. The matter is up for graps. We're good charlatans in here. Ignore what you're told and contemplate from scratch. "Who am I?" Stay with that, intending to have a direct consciousness into you now.

Who are you? Start contemplating that afresh, that is, without presuming anything. You might as well be a pencil or a banana, so hey, stay open. Then you can say who you are and move on to inquiring "What am I?" It's okay that you don't know, don't assume we're less ignorant here than the average folk.