UnbornTao

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Everything posted by UnbornTao

  1. A thought about what's true, or what you think to be true. It depends on what you're calling knowledge, but you can actually let go of your knowledge and set out to experience what's true. The point is that one can know directly the nature of things - we aren't just stuck with belief. I'm not dismissing belief; what you believe has consequences and is powerful, but this belongs to the relative. What I'm pointing out is that belief itself is of a different nature than an experience of truth. An assessment or claim isn't the truth it refers to, even if the belief is valid and factually grounded. Notice that no belief is needed to recognize that you currently do not know. This condition is intimately yours, permeating your very consciousness. Move in this direction, rather than covering it up.
  2. "Who" refers to the recognition of the conscious entity that you are. 'What' is about the "substance" of that being. The first one is actually not an enlightenment question, it's more like an insight. To be clear, an anwer isn't the goal - we're just taking a look: You see, hear, touch, and think, as well as feel and experience. None of that is who you are since it is being received by you. You don't find yourself in a perception or experience. Where is you to be found in those? Without extrapolating, who is experiencing those things? Get you directly. Again, don't believe me. Just wanted to open up this consideration a bit.
  3. Even a genuine direct consciousness can be "corrupted" by the mind. Someone like Adi Da cast himself as the sole gateway to God and fell into the adoration of his followers. He had a deep enlightenment, yet his group devolved into a cult and is now no more than a religion. Little remains of his teaching, given it's been turned into a system by his followers. Any ism is already way off the mark. They are purely conjecture in this context, no matter how intelligent or sophisticated. Such systems may sometimes be useful but they degrade whatever reality might have been originally grasped by an individual, assuming there was a breakthough there in the first place. When it comes to the truth, they're always wrong. Belief isn't just an extraneous thing - it's pervasive. Most of what you think you know is actually just a belief. In other words, we aren't directly in touch with the nature of anything. Moving in the direction of recognizing this fact is far more powerful than merely exchanging one conjecture for another. This trap can be escaped. We usually assume that our only option is to adopt some stance, cling to a worldview, or believe in something. In a sense, having a worldview might be inescapable, and yet it can be recognized as a fabricated convenience - and thus as something different from the truth. Why do we make up these things in the first place? Because we fail to realize the truth for ourselves. And so we become believers. Yet the possibility of direct realization remains. One could even adopt a practice of eliminating every belief they hold, which is more powerful and authentic, albeit emotionally and psychologically challenging at times. Why isn't such a practice seriously entertained and taken on?
  4. I'd begin with 'Who'. 'What' is a different question. @theleelajoker Don't jump to conclusions. What's perceived comes to you or is received by you, is it not? Keep digging.
  5. Another thing: survival is everything you do - it is the principle of life. From worrying about what to wear, wanting to impress, to sustaining your body and everything else. Why separate survival from other pursuits? The only exception is truth-seeking, which is an independent pursuit. Spirituality, in that sense, is just a different flavor of survival. It's all about you and improving your experience. @Joshe If it's about controlling one's mind, then you're no longer so influenced by your automatic drives and motivations. That doesn't mean you can't simply create things and move toward the goals you've set for yourself. I suspect there are many ideals on this domain. For example, Osho liked his luxurious cars. And Sadhguru's is quite successful in the conventional use of the word. You can also be an enlightened pianist, or some such. "Spirituality" or meditation practices aren't strictly reserved for monks, or restricted to a particular lifestyle. You may have a point, but I think reaching that level of detachment would have to require more involvement than the level I recommended. The point is, mindfulness tends to increase your effectiveness in whatever you do, as your attention is increasingly focused on your present experience. Whether you want to perform a certain action or not is up to you.
  6. In the end, what's believed is irrelevant and is different from the truth. Are you conscious of who you are? Do that first.
  7. Maybe that could happen to a degree, depending on one's commitment and how far one takes the practice. But it doesn't hurt. Controlling your mind is just that, and you could use it to better direct yourself toward your goals.
  8. Practices like meditation can enhance your ability to control your mind (not doing so much silly stuff with it), thereby increasing your effectiveness in life - like removing layers to see something more clearly, to put it metaphorically.
  9. @Sugarcoat Sounds good. I'd just pin down the subject being addressed. Hold it in mind while remaining open - free of bias and presumption. So, when it comes to yourself, who is that? And then you set out to discover the truth about it.
  10. That's common. Can you specify what you mean by that? What is it directed at? Man, this is fun. My bad, it seems you already clarified that in your post above.
  11. Hey, you're obsessed with you(rself). But who isn't? That could be a koan! Perception itself is an indirect process. I'm not so sure about calling it a filter - interpretation would be a better fit for that. Perception is more like an intermediary, metaphorically speaking. But you tell me. We could postulate that whatever we hold to be pure reality isn't a point of view, but the very thing itself, its nature. And we can, as a matter of consciousness.
  12. @zurew What do you expect to get from the interchange? Not just with me, but also from participating in such an endeavor as a whole. What is it that one is left with? Say someone has a profound enlightenment, and it's genuine. They might try to communicate it and claim something like: "consciousness is all, and you aren't separate from the nature of existence. You and existence share the same nature." Let's just pretend that's something they might say, for whatever reason. What do you think people could make of that? Seriously - my point is that it will be misunderstood in any case unless the individual has an enlightenment themselves. They can make stuff up in their minds, and this will always miss the point. Not to sound like a broken record, but I want to clarify that my points aren't about relative discoveries. Bring examples of the truths or metaphysical questions you're referring to. If it relates to an existential aspect of reality, it could be boiled down to: What is it? This involves enlightenment work. Something like what is emotion, or what is perception, may have to involve other methods. In many cases, it is an experiential matter and not just intellectual one - depending on what's being addressed. It's like someone communicating the possibility of waking up from a dream, as he or she has experienced that directly. Obviously, this is directed at others within the dream. They hear the words of the facilitator. Now, can the communication be understood? Not really. At best, it can provide dreamers with the possibility of waking up from the dream. And discussing whether the dream is made of rainbows or pixels - which occurs within the dream - is speculation and dream-stuff still. In this analogy, we can see that waking up is the only thing that really makes a difference. As someone who is asleep, we are having titillating discussions about the substance of the dream - and this is just another layer of the illusion. Something like that. To be clear, everything you're talking about is relative - that is, it refers to the relative domain. It's useful to recognize that nothing one has regarding the absolute is "the absolute." Even then, we might still be thinking of it as some "thing" out there that's grandiose and "inaccessible," or maybe as just an interesting philosophical consideration. When a direct consciousness is had, it is not a relative phenomenon and is not up for grabs - which is to say, one is in the same place, so to speak, as the thing contemplated. There's no separation between it and you. It isn't an answer, is self-validating, and it can't be wrong. This trueness isn't a function of one's mind or conviction but of the consciousness. And to discover existential truths, it's pretty much the only method - everything else would be indirect, perhaps scientific approximations of a fact or principle. But again, what's true must be dealt with on its own terms - the absolute requires "waking up." Anyway, that's all for my rhetoric and useless opinion. I don't know of any satisfying answer to give you, other than to have several enlightenments. That would likely move the conversation into a more experiential domain.
  13. Essentially, I'd say it's about recognizing that we don't consciously experience the nature of anything. It includes holding the possibility in one's mind that there might be truths beyond what we currently know or can know. From that, setting out to discover things can occur. Also, dispelling beliefs and recognizing assumptions. Something along those lines.
  14. @Sugarcoat Earnestly doing the exercise can provide you with a new perspective. Sure, what you said resonates. If a more gradual process helps, it's worth a shot. By the way, owning your internal state and reactions doesn't mean you're responsible for everything that happens to you; it just means you're taking that stance toward life. Nor does it automatically mean you're suddenly aware of every aspect of your experience - your drives, motivations, fears, and so on. Let's say there are two aspects to you: what you actually are - prior to all conceptual machinations, and what you've crafted throughout life and now take to be yourself. Openness is a principle, too. Just to be clear, I wouldn't confuse the idea of openness - or identifying yourself as open - with what the principle demands. Anyhow, throw all this out when contemplating, whatever the question.
  15. @Sugarcoat It was an exercise, did you do it? It's meant to push you into your experience and have you see your role in it. - We're all over the place now. Let's simplify it down to two subjects: the principle of responsibility, and finding oneself. Short answers: become responsible for your experience, and grasp who you are. The distinction I was referring to is between being and self. Okay, then I'd keep contemplating. But it's best to focus on a single subject. It can also be useful to revisit how we're holding the act of contemplating - it's more like an open, "silent" wondering.
  16. @zurew The main issue here is that there is no reference point for understanding what direct consciousness is without having had one. You may tacitly believe that the only tools available for accessing the truth are the mind and perception.
  17. What truths? This is my point: pursuits like comparing philosophical systems or schools are purely intellectual and have nothing to do with genuine direct consciousness. They are speculation and are worthless. Such questions stem from a fundamental misunderstanding: the attempt to intellectualize the absolute or force it into a conceptual framework. This approach works backwards from assumptions. It overlooks the fact that they are not a real assertion based on real consciousness in the matter. It's like forcing a square peg into a round hole - the mind attempts to transform the absolute into a knowable form, but in doing so it degrades the reality and completely misses the point. Consider someone who has an authentic enlightenment experience, only for the mind to dilute it into familiar religious interpretations. The absolute can't be reduced to anything, and what you deal with afterwards is not the consciousness itself but a human interpretation imposed after the fact. In simple terms: it cannot be grasped by the mind in any way - though the mind will try regardless. Anyway, reducing such matters to a mythical story or conclusion only serves to distract from any reality that might be true. Only direct consciousness makes a difference. Probably not what you were looking for. In short: you must get it yourself, all the intellect in the world isn't going to make any difference at all in such matters.
  18. @zurew Fuck Zen too, by the way. It falls into the same trap, and your response reflects that stuck-in-the-intellect pattern. This is why consciousness pursuits almost inevitably degrade into a belief system or religion in the end. The main point is that if we haven't had enlightenments yet, we don't really know what we're talking about, so it exists only as a placeholder in our minds. You want to "figure it out" by turning reality into a cosmology, a neat little package. When all is said and done, you find yourself in the very same place as before - not knowing what you and existence are -, only this time with more knowledge piled onto your "knowledge mountain" - guesses and conclusions, no matter how smart. But that is nothing. The matter is not relative. Relative to the possibility of direct consciousness, these discussions are worthless. And what other purpose is there other than increasing consciousness? This is the only way to access what's ultimately true about yourself and existence. Standing on a world of assumption undermines that possibility. Generally speaking, we don't seem to grasp that Jesus didn't invent Christianity, or that Ramana didn't talk about Advaita Vedanta or nonduality. There's a crucial distinction to be made here: grasping the truth versus creating, adhering to, or spreading a belief system. The majority of people are followers engaged in the latter. Still, one can contemplate and personally get it for themselves.
  19. Making that distinction requires grasping what being is. Until some headway is made on that front, it's not an "it." It's not just a part of you, or some object - it's you. So I'd invite you to start using "I" statements whenever you want to say things like "the self does this or that." Pretty much everyone works on improving their self-image, in both subtle and obvious ways. My point relates to the sentence above: you think you know what the self is because you've intellectually turned it into "another," as something separate from you. But you need to grasp that you're really talking about yourself. It's immensely powerful - and, most importantly, it has to be put into practice for it to make any difference in one's experience.
  20. OK - pretend you're a helpless victim of your experience and circumstances. Imagine your role is that of a passive watcher: things just happen to you, and the only option available is to superficially manipulate yourself and events in order to fulfill your needs. Everything feels imposed on you, and enduring it is pretty much all you can do. Now, make it real.
  21. Maybe the real context was the friends we made along the way.
  22. The kinds of realizations we're talking about here - no, they are not. They could be called enlightenment experiences, although that's a misnomer.