SOUL

If you cannot do something it is your limiting beliefs that make it so and has no influence over what someone else can or can't do. Also all the rest of the typical forum rhetoric has been addressed by me and if you didn't even read the post you cut up to quote me let alone any of the other stuff I already covered it all with I'm not sure repeating myself will help. Did you read this part when you cut it away? "The story will be 'let go' of...by not taking hold of it." To be clear any attention one gives the ego is exactly what it desires...attention...and that justifies it's identity. As many have testified on this forum about the ego it is also going to hide in the shadows undoubtedly being empowered through someone searching for it to 'dissolve'. I'm not sure the wack-a-mole method of trying to 'dissolve the ego' is the most effective. So, this is why I suggest depriving it of what empowers it, attention. Treat the ego like the story it creates.... by doing nothing. I do not react in any way to all the mind creates to capture our attention in generating identity. That's the simple straight forward approach I use with success, no complicated or intricate techniques or methods. Don't feed the beast...and keep on not doing anything, just be. Although, I understand that some people think they need more stuff to do and if it works for them then so be it. I'm not going to criticize what works for them but I always suggest the simple approach first... do nothing and keep doing nothing, eventually the beast starves to death.

Emotions and other sentiments aren't divided in dualism, they are independent of each other but can also combine at the same time on things. Plenty of people have love and fear simultaneously about partners or children and such. Your point about choosing gratitude is a good one but it's unhelpful to see emotions, sentiments and concepts as an either one or the other dualism paradigm since they aren't really that way in how they get expressed in us.

It's ok to appreciate the story, to enjoy the story but being attached to the story, identifying with the story and using it as justification is what leads to self suffering. Watch it like a movie.... you can watch a movie and really enjoy it without being attached to it, right? Like that. Oh and many therapists have no clue what to do with the nondual idea, instead frame it as cognitive behavioral therapy(CBT) and they will have a better understanding to work with you.

So you are saying that as long as you continue to agree with the ego you are the story? You basically supported what I said but said it as if you don't...Did you not understand what I was saying? Yes.... stop agreeing with the ego about the story.

Which brings us back to the topic of the thread... how to let go of the story? My suggestion would be to observe in the most indirect way we can the 'story' and it's constituent parts rising up from the subconscious mind into awareness of the conscious mind but just do nothing. Don't try to resist it, erase it, negate it, replace it, explain it, retrain it or anything. Don't react to the story in any way, I would suggest to not even give it any special attention of any kind. We will have some awareness of the story and the sensations the mind creates to call attention to it but be transparent to it's influence. Give it nothing to stick to. Be aware that you aren't 'ignoring' it because that even implies that there is something there to ignore and turn away from. We aren't validating or invalidating it, we just don't have any re-action to it at all. This way it isn't empowered to be a source of influence in our consciousness. Eventually the story will fade into just something that isn't a distraction from being present in the moment and awareness will simply will be free to transcend the story. The story will be 'let go' of...by not taking hold of it.

@Tim R This particular social dynamic isn't exclusive to this forum and it's not just commonplace in social groups but a fixture of socialization. It takes an especially vigilant awareness to dissolve the attachment to and transcend the story no matter how acceptable or even foundational it is to the social group one is in.

Oh, I get it but what I absolutely get and what you think I should get according to your story are two completely different things. Maybe you will get that eventually.

"Liberation is the end of the attachment" Liberation is the cessation of self suffering, attachment is the dynamic in our consciousness that causes self suffering. Recognizing this dynamic in us is sufficient for the dissolution of attachment without the requirement of a story. "there is no one there in which could be attached in the first place" This is introducing just another conceptualization that is added by the one that seeks to define itself even if it defines itself as nonexistent. We can simply dissolve our attachment to the story without using another story. According to your story there is no one disagreeing with and no one being disagreed with so why are you imagining that there is disagreement? It appears you don't even realize your own story, it's just ideological rhetoric that isn't genuine experience because if it was there would be no perception of disagreement since there isn't any, it's an illusion. Why add another story when it's not needed to dissolve attachment to a story? The thread starter is seeking to let go of the story and giving them another story is just story shifting.

@VeganAwake You know those Christians who think their interpretation of the bible is the only one that will save you and anything else sends you to hell? They even think other Christian churches aren't interpreting the bible right, that those others aren't really Christians and are going to hell. They alone possess the truth and it's as they say not any other way. There's a certain mindset behind that type ideological intolerance that doesn't allow someone to accept that someone else can have another way to what think they have gotten to themselves. It really does speak about the amount of complete trust in one's own experience to blind someone to the possibility of a variety of experience and perspectives being valid alternatives. On this forum if someone lines up their words right, says things a certain way and has the proper rhetoric it's pretty simple to get positive feedback and appear to have a level of credibility regardless of whether they have any genuine experience or not. There's a formulaic approach that can be feigned and it takes someone who has genuine experience to discern the difference. Almost 40 years ago I began my journey to free myself from self suffering but it was years later I had began to circulate with mystical minded people in real life and it was after I had already had deep awakening experiences. So my experience and perspective with my inner work wasn't informed conceptually by others to the degree I see in most people in these communities. This created a distinctly different approach to it for me and how I describe it. That has presented me with many instances where others doubt my experience, try to teach me the 'true' way and tell me I will only get it after I have experience the way they do. It happened often in real life and it happens just as much if not more online. Although, my autodidact path has allowed me to be open to the diversity of paths people can express with inner work. When I discuss with others I find myself drawn towards seeing through their perspective more than I am to having them see through my own. There is nothing better or more right about this attitude but after of decades of interacting I find it effective in communicating with others. Ultimately it all started for me as seeking the cessation of self suffering and it still is only about that. Well being is the primary focus and it's not about having all the descriptions line up just right or the same as others or of notables in the spiritual world. My path has also allowed me to explore consciousness in many diverse ways and not be hindered by ideological priming from others. Yet, through having an interest in others perspective I meditate on them and explore them through the methods I use in my own experience I often get deep insights about them without the constraints of precedent understanding. So many times I can get a perspective in clarity that others don't always have the ability to perceive in clarity because of the precedent understanding. My apologies if it seems like I'm in disagreement with your perspective, this isn't the case, I genuinely understand it as deeply as one can and I appreciate all perspectives because I'm aware that all stories are included in the whole of the infinite absolute so am embracing of the diversity of paths in it. I invite you to share in that perspective, it's quite liberating.

@VeganAwake I know it sounds unreal to you but people have other direct experience of awakening than you, yes, there are others who awaken and it isn't as you describe it. Again, I understand how people can get attached to their own story and are sure it's the only one that is the true description. If there is the depersonalized awakening experience there is also the full personalized experience and every degree of personalized and non-personalized experience in between. The absolute infinite includes everything and nothing as a whole which appears as one. I am well aware you aren't peddling a new better experience, you are peddling your own direct experience as if it's the only one that can possibly be true. If you didn't believe it's the only one that can be true you wouldn't have resistance to that others might not have the same as yours. Attachment is the limiting dynamic on our awareness, it's what creates the sensation of separation. The difference in the description, the story, is not what creates the sensation, it's attachment. Attachment to self, the identification with self is what limits our experience of awakening. So as one would dissolve the attachment to and identification with self it would appear to some as if the self dissolves as well. Some people require this sensation and appearance of dissolution of self as realized experience to trust that their awakening is 'true', that it is 'real'....but not everyone does. The attachment to awakening being just one certain description of the experience may be limiting the experience of awakening, even preventing the experience of awakening or becoming an obstacle if the realization of being presence. It's leading some to be attached to the specific description from another, someone else's story, not allow their own direct experience to unfold in the way that it will. They become attached to someone else's story and description which may limit or prevent their own awakening experience. Although, it's understandable why people are so convinced their own direct experience is the 'true' one and explains why they attempt to tell others that it is the way it has to happen and be.

@VeganAwake Attachment to one's own story limits the ability to realize that one's own direct experience isn't everyone's direct experience. When your reply is saying that it's the way I describe it so it will be the way I describe it that reveals it is your own perspective that is limiting awareness of the infinite potential of experience. There are infinite stories and simultaneously somebody/nobody/everybody experiencing them. People tend to have a preference for the one that helps them and this can create an attachment to it. A belief is 'trusting that something is the true' so if one trusts their their own direct experience is true then that is their belief. This is just what the word is, you are welcome to disagree with it but it is what it is. When someone is exposed to certain concepts quite often their perspective expresses in the way that they have been conceptually primed to interpret the experience as.

So you know what awakening is for everyone who experiences it and it's your story of it? Are you attached to the story there is no one to experience the story because are you aware that the infinite potential of the absolute includes all stories including there is everyone to experience it? Awakening is also the infinite fulfillment of I am experience if it is the end of personalized experience of it. It has everything to do with well being and the bliss of well being does influence behavior.

The story isn't the stumbling block, the attachment to the story is the obstacle to being present now. Don't replace one story for another story and think anything has changed if there is attachment to the new story because presence is still being limited by the identification to a story. The story of 'I am nothing' is no different than the story of 'I am something' if one is attached to the story. The story of the separate identity is no more of a hindrance to being than the story of no self because being transcends all stories even if the mind creates another story about it. Yes, 'no story' is another story about the story but all stories are empty of any power in us when our being isn't disturbed by the stories and awareness isn't distracted by the stories so awakening isn't limited by them and our consciousness transcends them.

Let's go Brandon!!! ....and I mean that in the genuine encouragement of you way not the other way being bandied about lately...

@PurpleTree Well, let me continue on with the sports metaphor yet the creative arts, martial arts and athletics share this same type of dynamic along with the inner arts. It doesn't really matter one's abilities, agility and attributes as long as we work with whatever skill set we do possess to the effect sought in us because the game is really just an inner match up of one on one with ourselves. There is going to be a natural limitation on how much specific guidance one random person can give another even if some general themes can be found in common. Each one of us has to be it for it to be, nobody can do it for us so be it or it's not.

After many years of playing basketball I still suck at it as bad as I did before so basketball is a scam and basketball coaches are scammers.

@Raptorsin7 Each one of us has a unique path in life and our perceptions are often influenced by our experiences so how we express the journey will not be the same. Me explaining my experience that may or may not have any similarity to anyone else is really an insignificant exercise and can distract others so more descriptions may not clarify anything. The work we do differs, the time we spend differs and if we do spend any time on doing any work differs. Again I will just point out that we can experience in being the 'fulfillment of the path' at any and every moment along the way while we do or don't do whatever it is we do or don't do for however long it does or doesn't take,

Although, God is all things and everything is nothing while ego that isn't really a thing is thinking about all of it which is an illusion...

Oh look... another mystical dick measuring contest so I say this in the most spiritual way possible, there is no dick because what you think you have is really just infinite absolute nothingness.

@Raptorsin7 Will answers to those questions satisfy the desires of the meddling mind? Complete understanding isn't a requirement for liberation. The body suffers and stopping the body's suffering isn't needed for liberation. Liberation is the cessation of SELF suffering. I can't even get one person to stop obsessing over getting answers to questions so why would you think any one person can change the issues and suffering of humanity?

The mind never allows us to be liberated, it even fixates on 'bliss' or 'love' or 'freedom' as something to attain and creates questions that need answers, explanations that need to be understood, reasons that need to be met and methods needed to be done. The mind loves the quest, it craves the story, it desires the distraction but it will never allow liberation to be realized because then we recognize the mind is what is keeping us from it. As long as one wants the process and the self justification the mind is addicted to instead of liberation from self suffering then that is what one will have. What's in the title of the thread? Give up the search...it's not a search because there's nothing lost. It's a journey and we can experience the destination of that journey along the way, the fulfillment is in every step of the path through experiencing the whole journey as one.

@Raptorsin7 I said nothing about divine....and we all have a story. Our flesh embodies being so it can experience harm and scar, the mind remembers the harms and scars then presents them to our awareness for agreement... for belief. Which you say you have been doing all the practice of recognizing 'aware being' stuff, well use that 'aware being' stuff to be aware of the healing. So when the mind/body experience generates the trauma the healing is already present. The body/mind may continue to generate the trauma for as long as the body exists yet the 'aware being' still can have the holistic healing of well being. So in essence, even if we trip over the hoop instead of jump through it and land on our face we can still experience the well being of liberation while doing it. It's not like life stops hurting, harm and scar still happens but the self suffering ceases. When healing is the primary focus of aware being the story the mind creates isn't an obstacle for well being. The only limitation to our experience of liberation are what we imagine are there. That video is saying endorse the dualism of the emotional and mental roller coaster. My message is that well being can exist regardless of how you view the happenings of our manifest existence and how one handles it all. Liberation isn't found in our views and or dues.

So now you experience the bliss of liberation? Congrats, the cessation of self suffering is really the point of all of the 'work' we think is done. If not.... then you have to wonder if it's the 'work' that is the obstacle to liberation. The mind loves all sorts of practices and methods it accomplishes to establish progress to itself, to justify the process but it will always place another task we need to accomplish to keep us on the treadmill of it's 'work'. Many of those practices and methods can be helpful in training the mind to do something it may not do on it's own but the experience of being doesn't require the mind to be... it's being. So we can experience being 'happy' even while the mind may do the work it thinks is accomplishing something. If your present experience is the bliss of liberation this would be obvious to you and maybe it is, don't let me be an obstacle to it. Just be it.

I can understand why it seems like it should be pretty complicated because if it was simple everyone would be 'happy'. I too have an active mind, one that is always turning over rocks to see what they are and what's under them. The mind wants to search for a reason, to make a plan, to do the things to attain this ever elusive 'happiness'. We get sick of the people who point to the obvious, we want the elaborate dance of inner debate that will get us the trophy. Nobody wants to hear that it's simple.... the search for happiness ends when we finally realize it's as simple as being happy.... just be it. The only thing that prevents us from being happy is all the things that the mind finds to keep us from being it. So just be happy no matter all that the mind finds to deny happiness in it's search for happiness.

Seems like it would be obvious