How to be wise

@Nahm Less talking, more doing my friend. Talking about non-duality is easy. Actually working towards it is a whole other thing. I have a rigid practice of 90 mins a day for the last four months. I’ve had many changes in my conciousness since. What I found is that the more I practice, the less I want to talk about non-duality. Do you have a rigid practice? How many hours a day? What is your current progress?

@Lynnel The Work of Byron Katie.

@Silvester all you have to do is fill in a judge your neighbour worksheet. It can actually be quite pleasurable filling it in. It’s in her book ‘Loving What Is’, which again is a must-read.

@Silvester Yes, of course. It’s a very strong shadow work process, but will also take you to enlightenment, because The Work is about unattaching from your long held beliefs. I recommend you buy the book ‘Loving What Is’ before you start, and also listen to the following audios: There’s a lot to learn about the process. If you want to see the progress of a friend of mine on The Work, here it is:

@Leo Gura it’s shoking how Plotinus, whose biography you recommended in the book list, is only at LOC 674. What is all that absolute, nothingness crap you mentioned in the booklist under his book ?. He’s only at the level of no self.

@Rilles No. Meditation will not purge your shit! There have been many people who have meditated for decades and were still raging inside. You can’t just quiet your mind. It has been tried and tested by hundreds of people. It’s a dead end. You need to investigate the thoughts that are causing your suffering. Inquiry, not meditation. That is the only way to let them go. Check out The Work of Byron Katie for more on that.

@Leo Gura What LOC would you characterise yourself in for your baseline conciousness? I mean, you’ve been meditating and self-inquiring for close to five years. If you haven’t reached 600s yet, then what does that say about those techniques?

@Good-boy the person in my photo is Byron Katie. I do her ‘Work’.

@Oliver Saavedra but it’s possible to live through purely the absolute truths. Imagine how sweet your life would be if you only immersed yourself in the absolute, and let your heart take over the relative illusion of maya.

I am reading the book ‘1000’ by Ramaji. But when you look at the amount of enlightened people he rated (with exact numbers, eg 734 and 856), it makes you doubt whether this book is actually real or not. I mean, how can you give them exact numbers. He gave people like Muhammad and Lao-tzu 1000, but how can you be sure? All we have of those people are stories and books. Who here believes that this book is actually real? If so, explain how he gave those ratings.

This video felt like a fight between two enlightened beings and their metaphysics. Who do you think had the higher understanding of reality?

@Leo Gura but the fact you read it on the article means she was caught

@Leo Gura have you had any enlightenment experiences from your Kriya yoga practice yet? If not, how long do you think it will take you?

@SoonHei let’s face it. In your life time, you will probably never find out about your pets feelings and whether or not it is enlightened. Just let it go. Turn the focus over to yourself and ask yourself those questions. If you want your cat to become enlightened, turn the focus to yourself: ‘I want to get enlightened’. Now that’s possible. The former one, not so much. @DecemberFlower well, what are you waiting for then. Clearly you don’t have the time to be worrying about animals. When it comes to your own self-realisation, you need to be selfish with it. Worry about yourself first.

@Nexeternity wouldn’t it be nicer if you could turn off all your negative emotions. That’s something you can do. As for the physical pain, it will feel a lot better if you didn’t have any negative emotions in your life. So now you know what to work on.

@DecemberFlower we can never know that my friend. But are you enlightened? That’s something you can know and work on.

So I am reading the book ‘spiral dynamics’, and there they say that some countries like China have developed an ‘unhealthy’ form of strict blue. But what causes societies to develop ‘unhealthy’ memes? Is it because they haven’t resolved some of the lower stages?

@tsuki the book says that, for China to grow properly, they need to abandon their current ‘unhealthy’ blue and adopt a more ‘healthy’ blue. So clearly it is ‘unhealthy’ to them.

Or at least that is according to the book ‘spiral dynamics’ written by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan. For those of you who have the book, go to page 106 paragraph 4. It is saying that Donald Trump is a spiral wizard, who is cleverly leading the country up the spiral, and is helping the country.

@Prabhaker sweet christmas! There’s so many Indians that it’s not shocking you find such extreme ones. Trump is also firing them up because they are BLUE/PURPLE. Trump is ‘keeping them safe’ like one guy put it.

@Leo Gura In the book ‘spiral dynamics’, it says that blue and green are the most rigid of the stages. Should we expect the Scandinavian countries and maybe Canada to make it up to yellow anytime soon? How long would you give it?

@Leo Gura you once said that Scandinavian countries are very happy and they are stage green. But who is happier, green or yellow? Because you also said that one of the reasons that yellow goes to turquoise is because yellow suffers too much.

Looking at that pyramid, it’s hard to map out the stages of spiral dynamics with each segment of that pyramid. For example, the need for friendship, family and sexual intimacy sounds like a green need, but the need for self esteem and respect, which is on top, sounds more like an orange need. Plus, I don’t see where religion fits in the model. Religion comes from the fear of an afterlife. I don’t see it as fulfilling any need. Religious people can never become atheists after they fulfill some ‘need’. Otherwise it would be easy to convert religious people. What do you guys think?

@Leo-Tzu he’s standing. Can’t you tell by the way he moves around.

@Pernani it’s the same book ‘Loving What Is: 4 questions that will change your life’ If you’re interested in the results you will get from the work, read the book ‘a thousand names for joy’ where Katie just talks about her daily experience and the results that she got from the work. Personally, it was that book that motivated me to start doing The work.