How to be wise

@Faceless are you practicing The Work?

@Faceless eventually, once you’ve advanced quite far with The Work, that thought will need to be given up as well. But I don’t see any relevance in what you’re talking about for the beginner.

@eskwire All suffering is caused by attaching to thoughts. Try to give me any type of suffering which isn’t caused by attaching to thoughts. Once you’ve unattached from all thoughts, you have no more suffering. Simple maths. What else is enlightenment but unattaching from thoughts. Once you’ve unattached from all thoughts, you have permanent non-dual awareness. Meditation is fine, until you come out of it and somebody cuts you off in traffic. You can achieve with The Work what will take decades with meditation. I’m talking about acquiring everything that the episode ‘Big picture of self-actualization’ was talking about. Why meditate when there is a fast track for enlightenment?

@Faceless @abrakamowse Attaching to thoughts is what creates time. How can you awake from time if you don’t unattach from them!

@eskwire I’m sorry if I sounded too harsh. You can’t heal from a trauma unless you realise that the physical event didn't cause your suffering. Your thoughts about the situation did. If you carry on believing that trauma is possible, you will continue living in fear that maybe tomorrow you will be traumatised. You do the work on thoughts that cause you internal suffering. ‘The Work’ is based on healing the mind. A thought like ‘I broke my ankle’ isn’t really what’s causing most of your misery (but it does cause some, so you could The Work on it if you want to). If you break your ankle, and want to do The Work, do it on a thought like ‘I shouldn’t break my ankle’ which most people clearly are attached to. Who would you be without the thought ‘I shouldn’t break my ankle’ when the paramedics are taking you away? More internal peace. Internal healing only happens when you realise that what you thought happened didn’t. Btw, Byron Katie’s depression was pretty serious. In fact, the last two years before her awakening, she couldn’t leave her house due to fear. She stayed in her bedroom for months on end, her clothes and hair stuck to her body because of how long she stayed in one place. That sounds pretty serious to me. Sidenote: in the advanced stages of The Work you can actually stop your physical pain. Physical pain always happens in the past and future. After her awakening, there was a time when Katie stuck her hand down a champion juicer, and it literally crushed her fingertips. Even though her hands and clothes were filled with blood, she couldn’t feel any pain because of her not attaching to thoughts.

@Faceless are you claiming that people with serious emotional problems can’t contemplate? That’s nonsense.

“It’s not inquiry if you get the questions” Lol what is inquiry then? Inquiring into whether a certain statement is true or not is possible. Why wouldn’t it be?

Despite the name, it’s actually a lot easier than the standard meditation and yoga path. Because it actually ends somewhere. The sankharas and body issues are caused by attaching to your thoughts! The ‘turnaround’ happens after the four questions for a reason. You first contemplate whether the thought you’re attaching to is true, and the other questions. When you come to realise that they weren’t true then you turn them around, so that you can gain more insights about the opposite, and embody them in your life. The turnaround is part of ‘the healing’. Lol how can you heal from a trauma if you actually believe that it’s possible to be traumatised.

How would it lead to self-deception? It’s inquiry into your thoughts. As Katie says, the questions are useless without your answers. The four questions themselves can’t do anything for you. The thing that will transform you is the inquiry you make into the question, the insights you receive whilst contemplating those questions, and the awareness of ‘untrue thoughts cause pain.’ ‘The Work’ is a method which points you to those truths.

@Recursoinominado @Ether @Faceless @phoenix666 @Viking @Leo Gura For those of you who want to use ‘The Work’ specifically for enlightenment, this pdf file will help you: https://kupdf.com/queue/byron-katie-losing-the-moon-full-book_58e601f7dc0d601f70da980d_pdf?queue_id=-1&x=1524217533&z=ODUuMjExLjE3My43OA==

‘The Work’ is more focused on questioning thoughts that give you emotional pain, rather than metaphysical questioning. She wrote a book ‘Loving What Is’ which will explain everything. Check out her other books as well.

@Dan Arnautu @Salvijus @cetus56 @InfinitePotential @starsofclay @AlwaysBeNice This technique will take you everywhere you need:

@Recursoinominado @Ether @Faceless @Viking meditation can help you feel peaceful and may (if you work very hard) give you an enlightenment experience. But as soon as you come out of meditation, those unquestioned thoughts are back and the mind becomes noisy, the emotions intense. With ‘The Work’, you waste no time ‘doing nothing’ or ‘labelling.’ You are directly questioning the thoughts that disturb your peace of mind. Inquire into each thought that you are attaching to, until you’ve undone all of them. What you’re left with is no-mind. Not in your meditation session, but every moment of your life. You will live with your enlightenment, every moment of your life. With yoga, this will take decades to achieve. Just look at Satgurunath or Ennio Nimis, who have been practicing Kriya yoga for their whole lives. They get all sorts of kundalini awakenings and mystical experiences. Once they come out of doing yoga, very little has changed.

Which almost never happens. Byron Katie: “I’ve worked with people who have meditated for thirty, fourty years, and they come out of that space [meditating] and still live believing their thoughts.”

@Leo Gura “Truth is what remains when you remove all the ideology.” I’m quoting you exactly. The work is about removing all your concepts and beliefs until you have none. When you remove the beliefs, what remains is the truth of non-duality. Not an experience of it, but permanent awareness of it. Am I wrong?

I don’t know much about shadow work to be honest. But I know that ‘The Work’ will take you straight to sagehood in a matter of a few years. I’m talking about the level of sagehood that only old enlightened people have.

@Samra @Charlotte @Otogi This technique will solve all your problems:

@moon777light @Arman @Truth Addict Shadow work is fine, but if you want enlightenment and are currently depressed/have emotional issues, I would highly recommend this technique:

When I started ‘The Work’ a month ago, I was suffering from chronic anxiety. Today, it’s all gone. My body now feels a lot lighter. I realise that there is no such thing as time. The truth of non duality is slowly dawning itself upon me. My habits have been transforming. Even my family has told me that I changed. A month ago, I had chronic fatigue, and would get tired if I so much as went to the corner shop. Today, my chronic fatigue has reduced by 4-5 times. (According to Byron Katie, energy problems only come from your beliefs). That has been true for me so far. My progress is only starting...

Read the book ‘one thousand names for joy’ to know what it feels like to complete the work.

Many people have become enlightened with it. We’re not just talking about enlightenment. We’re talking about sage hood. Total purification of your mind, emotions and habits. And not in decades. In a few years.

I enjoyed watching this video, even though I understood very little of it. Although something he said has really confused me. Nisargadatta: “Everything is beingness. But I, the absolute, am not that.” I heard Leo always say that ‘everything is consciousness, everything is one’, but nisargadatta is contradicting that. Why is he distinguishing himself from everything else?

@Faceless @Salvijus When you transcend the illusion of time, reality will feel new to you. Every moment of your life will feel like it’s happening for the first time. Incredible!

@Erlend K In the episode ‘The big picture of self-actualization’, Leo said that becoming a sage and fully self-actualizing takes decades. And that is true with bhuddist meditation and Yoga. Shinzen young, who has been practicing zen bhuddism for decades, admitted that he did not fully free himself of suffering. (Obviously he doesn’t suffer nearly as much as we do, but he said he has some way to go.) For yoga, there have been people like Ennio Nimis, who have been practicing Kriya yoga for fourty years hardcore, and again they’re still not completely free of suffering. Byron Katie, on the other hand, hasn’t suffered a negative emotion in 31 years. The reason I call it heaven is because that’s what I feel often after I finish a session of the work. ALL SUFFERING is because of a belief that you have. The work is a method for undoing that suffering. No labelling, no breathing, none of that. Just straight inquiry into your beliefs until you have none left (that cause you suffering). When you have no beliefs left to inquire, where will any negative emotion come from. You will feel ecstatic every moment of your life. Your mind will be quiet. You will be enlightened. Why meditate or do yoga after that? What for? Of course, you can carry on contemplating after that to deepen your understanding of reality. But you will live with no problems. The goal of yoga or meditation was just that. But Leo is right. It will take decades with yoga or meditation. But with ‘The Work’, it’s a matter of a few years.

@Leo Gura @username ‘The work’ destroys all vasanas and karma. If one completes ‘The work’, they will feel blissful and ecstatic for every moment of their lives until their death, no matter what happens or what they do. Total unconditional love will come from doing it. And it’s so easy!