UnbornTao

There was a guy in New York who set himself on fire fairly recently. He was not a Vietnamese Theravada monk, and this goes to show the role that fantasy plays in spiritual circles. Was that Nirvikalpa? Granted, he might have had insight into the nature of pain, although this would still be relative. It'd be recognizing the distinction/experience "pain" as a conceptual activity that is itself generated by you. Thinking of it as the result of a process is problematic, which you keep bringing up. You hold it as some sort of fantastical state. I meant stopping your brain waves, reading minds, levitating, etc. Whatever trip, state or experience you go through can't produce enlightenment and isn't necessary. This would concede that what's true of you now is missing something and that it has to be "managed" by first achieving "this or that." This goes to show that standing on one's consciousness on the matter is harder than continuously referencing adopted hearsay. Ananda, you're looking elsewhere.

@Water by the River No matter what state or experience you're in, however powerful or healing, that isn't enlightenment. This is like siddhis. Nice tricks but ultimately distractions. It is not a perception either. What you're referring to is a function of mind. It belongs to the domain of mind control.

It's entertaining mental masturbation. Of course people like him. You'd be better off with someone doing real work like Adyashanti.

Alan Watts was another charlatan. A bit out of the blue, but paying attention to what he's doing makes it clear.

It's not a perspective, but you know that, and I'm not. This is basically the reality of interaction: you can work on a tree as it is a grounded reality, physical and "occurring", while "the forest" is entirely a convenient fiction. Because they're singing and dancing. I also suspect there's a fair amount of fantasy going on there. Hence the culty vibes. This is why I dislike using terms such as spiritual. It can mean anything. If you hold it as getting in touch with your body, letting yourself go in social contexts, etc, then sing away. But at that point why call it spiritual and think it special? You could achieve the same result by going for a run or by playing video games. This is like doing hatha yoga and thinking you're getting nearer to your higher self or some such, when all you're doing is stretching your body. Just call it what it is.

Two approaches to facilitating others: Moving them into a new experience: This approach often meets resistance because it involves "taking away" their current experience in favor of introducing a new one. Pushing them into their current experience: This requires guiding them through the process of personal discovery, helping them generate an experience that more closely aligns with the one you're pointing to.

If it's meaningless, and then again, we don't know that, you can create meaning. If it's meaningless, why the negative disposition? Isn't a negative attitude towards that still operating from meaning? Of course, negative is still meaningful. Perhaps you're misunderstanding what this is about, and you are in fact free to create any meaning that you want for your life consciously. Make it empowering and healthy, and set out goals for yourself to move towards. It could be mastering a skill, becoming enlightened, becoming a professional athlete, or whatever. The point is that the purpose pushes you to new experiences and learning opportunities, and that it "embiggens" you (shows up on The Simpsons). Also: What is meaning? Something to contemplate.

I'm asking what they're doing and why. Increasing consciousness isn't limited to the absolute. Social itself doesn't exist, so working on the individual is the thing to do. In any case, pretending that rituals such as this one will somehow lead to a "spiritual" result is misleading, which is what I'm pointing out. But then again, you can use "spiritual" as an umbrella term for any kind of state or experience, specially if it is unusual. Not everything is facing a wall. Nothing against having fun, as long as it's called that. They're singing and dancing.

You win. Cheetos pizza.

I guess the next conversation could turn into: what is language?

I'd say that that would be something else, not consciousness.

It's easy to hide behind the genetics part and underestimate what you can accomplish with commitment.

What even is the purpose of that? You can go to a Taylor Swift concert and it would be as "spiritual" as this. You're right to be skeptical of rituals that are aimed at "social" purposes rather than anything real. Of course it comes off as cult behavior.

You just need to learn how to cook them. Vegetables stir fry (carrots, red pepper, onion), a bit of salt, some spices (parsley, cayenne pepper, thyme), tomato sauce, three boiled eggs, two tablespoons of this sauce (red peppers, garlic, cumin, salt, vinegar, and olive oil), and of course, a can of cooked lentils.

Ramana was free of life and death and Wilber wanted him to work at McDonalds. After being diagnosed with cancer, his students wanted him to go into treatment. Ramana's disposition, if I recall correctly, was something along the lines of: "Why? Just let me die already." This speaks not of repression or apathy but transcendence and freedom. On his deathbed, his students were beside him, crying and mourning the loss of his teacher. He said, I'm paraphrasing: "Why are you crying? Where do you think I'm going?" That is something that we find incomprehensible from here. It points to a radically different perspective than ours.

How one uses language reflects the distinctions that one employs and where one is coming from. Neither have we met Ramana, etc. About "this and that", it wouldn't be a problem if we weren't talking about the absolute. Take care not to cause diabetes with your "water."

Later this year.

The author of Nondual Perspectives on Quantum Physics is releasing a new book soon. https://tomajjavidtash.com/2018/10/29/nondual-perspectives-on-quantum-physics/

@Water by the River You seem to continue to speak of, and hold, enlightenment as something relative that is comprised of a plethora of distinctions, processes, states, duration, this and that, in addition to continuously using jargon and referencing a lot of external sources. Why? You seem to want to convince others as much as you want to convince yourself. Clear communication is getting across one's experience as it is, and it is able to stand on itself. Not so sure you're selling water at all.

Bread and toppings are but fleeting illusions, mere whispers in the vast emptiness of the pizza void. To grasp at bread is to chase the wind; to cling to toppings is to hold onto shadows. Pizza, as we perceive it, is a construct of our dualistic mind, an attachment we must transcend. In the realm of ultimate truth, there is no pizza, and yet, pizza is everywhere. Non-pizza neither affirms nor denies; it is the middle way, the path of balance and harmony. Thus, the enlightened diner sees beyond bread and toppings, savoring the taste of emptiness itself. --GPT

This relates to one aspect of your post: You're basically taking hearsay on faith. Whatever's true about anything is whatever's true for itself now. You seem to be fixating on a particular belief system such as non-duality, isms of all kinds, et al. This already undermines true investigation because it is not based on openness but on speculation and wishful thinking born out of ignorance, even by many of the creators/proponents of such cosmologies (ways of seeing the world). It is not a process and there's nothing you can do about it, except being open now and wanting to get it (contemplation) seem to help. Remember that Gautama, after having studied various schools of thought and practices, ultimately had to leave all that behind and stand on his own experience. This is already the case even before you've set out to study others.

Ken Wilber's wig pizza + Buddhist rats topping.