SOUL

This is often what happens with 'truth seekers', they believe their experience is the absolute truth for everyone, preach it like they are an authority about it then lash out attacking others if their word isn't received as the gospel truth they think it is.

Go back? I'm not sure you thought this through...there's no going and no back... Also, sorry to hear about no healing for you, others can and do heal whether you ever experience it or not.

What if someone is addicted to pickleball? Asking for a friend...

I'm not one for esoteric deepities, so I take a practical approach. Although, it's difficult to express it without touching on some abstractions. In the mind there are sensations associated with motivating our behavior for survival and these appear in what we call awareness. These are things like emotions, thoughts, urges, impulses and such. The ego is the story telling part of our survival process that pulls all of these into a self identity, which it seems humans have a quite developed sense of this. The issue with ego is that it will use even suffering to get what it wants as long as it motivates the behavior for survival. In fact, suffering without actually being under any actual present duress is a very powerful tool for it to do what it does, it's imaginary suffering, it's self suffering. Also, the story it tells is an important part of its process, so it protects the story as if its life depends on it...because its life is the story. All of these things I've mentioned like mind, self, ego and awareness comprise what we call consciousness. Yet awareness, though being a facet of consciousness also can transcend the appearance of individual consciousness and awaken to absolute consciousness. So the ego is merely the storyteller of our individual consciousness.

You change what I wrote in the quoting of me but it was you who created the premise about me awakening from a line of thought, not me. Thought has nothing to do with it but you want to make that it was me suggesting it does because you want to disagree with it as if I did...which I didn't. That's some sketchy discourse, maybe you should stop there.

So you are telling me that I will never awaken with a line of thought that you don't share because, well, you have your specific delicate way that cannot be explained here and it must be done the way you trust is true. Ok buddy.

By wanting to destroy the ego it's empowered it to be something that is fought against. The ego desires to be real and by feeding into the notion it is a real thing to destroy it is creating it to be something to fight and as strong as the force trying to destroy it. This also puts consciousness in a state of conflict and peace, which is the absence of conflict, isn't found with conflict. This conflict causes self suffering so instead focus on being at peace no matter the appearance of sensations in the mind and eventually the ego will reflect this peace back because it only is what we feed it through our experience in the present moment. Of course be aware to not desire the ego to be something of our creation or destruction, attaching one's peace to transforming the ego is just another device of the ego to get the attention it craves. Just be at peace, no conditions are required, just be it, this is unconditional peace.

That is the reasoning which describes the nature of being at peace, as soon as it is realized in your consciousness it stops being a reasoning of the mind and it becomes reality in presence. The cessation of self suffering which is called liberation is when we cease to join with the ego's desire to attach to things in life so our consciousness is freed from the bondage of identifying with the temporal which is genuine peace. Also, these 'told ya so' people haven't realized it either...it is self evident.

Do you think they are your thoughts?

@Danioover9000 I don't know that he was being all that manipulative in a malicious way. I understand the context of how this 'wisdom' was conveyed to him under the guise of father to son but I suspect it was simpler originally when he received it and then he filled it out to the form he is presenting it as now. He is a smart guy and I'm sure he is well aware of how this 'wisdom' isn't gendered but he also is smart enough to know where most of his bread gets buttered so he's definitely going to lean in to what he knows will be heard by those who have been his core audience that has brought him to his current notoriety. I don't think he was trying to be demeaning or dismissive in his traditionalist framing as others in that space who use similar framing can be but I'm going to guess he'd rather not incur the wrath of people in that space who aren't as smart as him and might get triggered by a more 'diverse' framing.

It's a mystical riddle.

Nothing works for enlightenment...contemplate that.

Doesn't work for what?

At least intellectuals study something, they have some basis of knowledge and understanding to draw off of even if their common sense is skewed by the lack of real world experience and feel peer pressure to form their opinions. On the other hand there are those who reject all academic rigor, their common sense is warped by their biases and have zero intuitive ability. These people's opinions are merely parroting what their 'thought leaders' want them to believe. It may be a choice between dumb and dumber but don't allow their ignorance become your stumbling block.

@ChrisZoZo I'm actually quite unserious about it...my focus is on well being and any awakening to absolute is simply a byproduct of the well being I experience. Although, I appreciate the kind words.

@ivankiss Thirty plus years of trying to explain the simple nature of well being has led me to get creative with it and each generation has their way of connecting to things or it winds up that the simple sounds boring. Well being is exciting for me, it's amazing and I hope everyone will experience it in their lifetime. You did a great job in the opening post, I just used the same premise and spun it more succinctly. An expanded explanation is useful, too. Just ask Leo, he's a master of the expanded explanation. In my life I don't often have 3 hours to explain things so I have an elevator pitch for liberation from self suffering.

@ivankiss Yea, nowadays, we have to compare things to computers or video games otherwise the youth will tune it out.

Ego is a user interface that our awareness uses to navigate an appearance of environment and we can rewrite the code for it...well, we are always rewriting the code even if we don't think or know we are.

Isn't this essentially what I said to you in the 'feeling incomplete' thread you made? Although, he didn't touch on two aspects that seem to feed the 'broken' and 'incomplete' idea and feeling. Our desire, which includes all the different forms of yearning that express themselves in us physically, emotionally and psychologically. He did kind of hint at it by saying we continue to live life with the chop wood carry water tangent but to really hone in on how to overcome desire isn't to even overcome it. It's to not identify with the desire which often makes us feel 'broken' or 'incomplete'. We don't erase or dissolve desire, we just don't let it rule our being, it doesn't define our experience, it doesn't disturb our peace because our presence transcends desire. The other is expectations. We may find ourselves with the impression that things should, could and would be different and that different circumstance is where and when the complete and healed us is. He does kind of touch on that by stressing the now which is a powerful realization and his 'predict the future' bit alludes to expectation without using the word. Although, to really get a deeper insight into it this can be plainly said that expectation is one of the seeds of self suffering and discontent. Again, to not identify with them is to transcend them. You may say to me that these things I point to are obvious things we all know and understand but I'd reply with it isn't just knowing and understanding them, it's realizing them. Make them real in our experience, cease to identify with these things, and we rob them of the power to create self suffering in us. It doesn't mean we have to erase or dissolve them to be liberated, though we may weaken or quiet them through this but don't let a desire or expectation of dissolving them create separation from well being in us. Poor fella, he was laboring through that video and I did find it a little distracting, I thought he was going to barf at a couple of points. It is a testament to his resolve! I guess the old saying 'don't fix what isn't broken' has a new twist in meaning if applied to this topic.

If one imagines it to be that way, it is that way for them yet it is not that way for everyone. One doesn't have to imagine a dissolution of the dream to realize the absolute and sure, one can imagine it has to be that way so it is that way for them...but not everyone. One can transcend the dream so realize absolute awakening in an instant while the 'dream' remains as it is except our perception of the dream ceases to be a dream, we recognize it as reality. One could say that to be asleep is to be dreaming but awake the dream ceases to be it.

We can imagine it to be a gradual state of lucidity and that would be a conceptual paradigm that separates awareness from absolute realization because one imagines it to be that way so pushes it off to some imagined 'future' time. Even to imagine that absolute realization has to take a certain form of experience can be an obstacle to realizing absolute wakening in present experience.

There is no separation between 'enlightened' and not so once this is realized it doesn't make any sense to point to that distinction since it doesn't exist. It is those who don't realize it that will point to the separation because their mind creates it for themselves so are 'not'.

You aren't ready for a genuinely enlightened teacher, I can tell by your posts so I won't be offering any advice at this time.

Yes...and it's closed minded rhetoric when he could have easily stripped the advice of gender regardless if it was his father telling a son this and presented it as suitable for all people....which it is. Of course, right wing traditionalist grifting is very profitable and allows him to avoid being called woke which apparently is the most evil thing to be according to his target audience. Understand my point yet?

That's my point though....it's closed-minded stuff to think this is gendered advice from him. Or course I only looked at your list and didn't watch the video so maybe he says it's good advice for all in it.