SOUL

@Joseph Maynor Sometimes ancient words work very well with an update.... wisdom2.0..... hehe Well, @Serotoninluv , it's better understood as pellucid

If you meet Buddha on the internet, troll him.

Why should I talk about 'deeper spiritual dynamics' when the simple ones suffice for pointing to liberation from self suffering? The ego wants 'deeper', it wants complex, it wants intricate and detailed methods and techniques to secure it's identity as the 'spiritual seeker'. What she really does express beautifully is the simple nature of just being present. That's an empowering expression of being but her trying to describe what is and is not it without realizing that her description is just from her own perspective of it and not any absolute truth about it was a distraction that could cause self suffering. Yes, we are experiencing our spirituality from a subjective perception of it and language isn't always effective in communicating our experience to others. Although, to excuse the obvious double speak that is central to many 'teaching' because of that difficulty to describe is enabling the distraction by it.

I did just explain it... quite clearly.... using language and words... without having contradiction... it's not impossible... it's actually quite simple.

It's not about being right, she may very well have the experience of empty stillness in contrast to the full activity of the mind and life so associates the stillness with being. Being is present in all kinds of expression but even 'being' when perceived from the perspective of just awareness is full and active in comparison. Within awareness there are even degrees of fullness and emptiness or stillness and activity. Besides, who is it that decides the empty stillness is the 'true self', the ultimate of being or 'true spirituality'? Not just in the 'no self' who sense of it.... but it seems like there is this doctrine of discourse that is accepted as the 'truth' about spirituality and a expression of behavior that is perceived as some sort of proof which supposedly signals to others that one has it. Although, there are many varieties of teachers with many varieties of methods and expressions. So, is it just a matter of preferences or which appeals more in how one would look to others in helping find a way of viewing it? In some ways that may be a consideration but realistically if someone's words doesn't lead to liberation from self suffering what they teach is more distraction than anything else. This is something that only each one of us can really know about the 'teachings' from our own experience. I myself found my way in an autodidact fashion in the pre-internet era but then while circulating around all these spiritual type communities and gurus I began to realize my experience was exceptionally unique. I could see right through all of the spiritual double speak. So my way of articulating it tends to be pretty simplistic and doesn't contain much of the complexities of the more traditional and typical belief systems. It's not a matter of one or another are right or wrong, it really just does come down to liberation from self suffering, does it point to it or does it distract from it? Although, having an attachment to any of them or who teaches it can be a stumbling block to liberation, as well.

She definitely is expressing a conceptual idea of spirituality. @DrewNows @purerogue Although she is suggesting that this is the only way 'true spirituality' is expressed and something other than that is 'distorted' and 'impure', which are the words she used. Presence of being transcends all concepts of characteristics in expression one would have about it. The 'still' and 'empty' isn't any more 'spiritual' than the 'active' and 'full' because being is present through all expressions to one who is awakened. Accept the transitory nature of experience that spirituality is all expression and having conceptual notions about only certain ones being 'true spirituality' sets up expectations that could serve to inspire desire to emulate only certain characteristics instead of being present. Now don't confuse what I'm saying to mean I suggest that she is 'wrong' or that it isn't 'true'. I'm just pointing out that she said it isn't about those dichotomous concepts and yet she went on to portray them in the duality of what is and isn't 'true spirituality'. Being present isn't limited to just the stoic placid sterility of the conceptual empty stillness. Being present is what it is even through the transitory human nature of our thoughts and emotions happening in a manifest existence that swirls around in activity. @Mu_ BAHA!

Stillness n motion so jus be

I'm laughing as I'm listening to this, does anyone else see it? She says there's no true or false then goes on to tell us what is true and not. Says being doesn't find flaws then is finding flaws in others. Everything is everything she says then says 'true spirituality' is only as she says it is. Says no definitions and no understandings then goes about teaching about what she defines and understands it as. What it again and this time really see it for what it is.

Even no concept and no belief is a conceptual belief and even truth is a conceptual belief. This is the type of guru doublespeak that points to someone else's conceptual belief as an illusion and calls their own as the truth. That sort of word dance is the game one plays when trying to be 'right' and having the 'truth' while telling other's they are 'wrong' and 'illusion'. It isn't that there is no conceptual belief that passes through perception at all which makes for the awakened experience that people call the conceptual belief of 'enlightenment'. It's the attachment to that conceptual belief which may cause self suffering in the one it passes through. If a conceptual belief is enshrined as truth it has the power to cause suffering to the one that empowers it. Someone perceptive might say to me 'aha, are you not calling your own truth and another's an illusion'? I'll reply that it's all conceptual belief that passes through perception, even my own perspective but it doesn't cause self suffering because I do not enshrine my perspective as truth. It's a momentary perspective and awakening is the presence of being in the moment not the perspective's contents in that moment. Awakening to oneness will have infinite perspectives of perception to experience in infinite moments of now to experience them but isn't any one of them, all of them or none of them. It's the being present in the moment of perceiving, not what passes through as the content of the perception. Our presence of being allows for whatever passes through perception to be as it is but don't build a shrine to any of it. Realization is awakening to presence of being in the moment, knowledge is what passes through the perception and is expressed infinitely. Attaching to any of it can cause self suffering through our enshrining it as truth but don't enshrine this realization either....let it be what it is.

I would even draw a distinction between knowledge, which is the accumulated understanding of information, compared to knowing, which I would call the intimate direct experience. Realization awakens 'knowing' and simultaneously doesn't need knowledge.

You seem to miss the point of that saying and why I was using it, @thesmileyone. The original post was asserting that relatively routine behavior somehow is an indication of whether someone experiences liberation and that saying asserts it has no real value in showing it. I just updated it....

Before enlightenment chop cyberwood and carry digiwater after enlightenment chop cyberwood and carry digiwater.

That is quite close @mandyjw, except that the type of suffering that we are free from in liberation is self suffering. We experience pain with the body and a lingering pain in the body is what is called suffering but the type of suffering that happens within consciousness is the self suffering that can happen even when the body is free from pain. The awareness of emotional pain, reputational pain of the ego, past pain, potential pain in the future and mortality are what can cause self suffering in us. So yes, you accurately assess that freedom from suffering is a present moment experience but that freedom is experienced in self conscious though we may experience pain in the body, even lingering pain. In liberation we can experience all kinds of pain and emotion without it ever causing self suffering.

I prefer not to get too complicated in conceptualizing that deeply but it can simply be understood as the screen being equated with the ego. The contents of consciousness get displayed on the screen for awareness, the observer, to view. So the screen is really a dynamic entity in itself that the contents get projected on and attempts to interact with the observer to convince it to 'believe' the story arranged on the screen, the ego.

From your question it's apparent that you do not have money and you don't have liberation. By liberation I am talking about the freedom from and cessation of self suffering. This is different than 'happiness' because happy is just an emotional state that is transitory like sadness, anger, fearful and all the rest, they are all something we experience in passing. Liberation is something that either we have or don't have even as emotions, thoughts or physical conditions will pass through our experience of them. I know this about you because if you had either money or liberation you wouldn't be asking the question. I have experienced having a lack of money in self suffering and in liberation, I also have experienced having money while self suffering and with liberation. I can tell you from experience that any happiness I had while still self suffering was empty of any real fulfillment because I still was self suffering. In liberation any of the passing emotions, thoughts and conditions I had didn't change the self of fulfillment in me, there is always a sense of peace. So I hope you can understand the distinction between just being 'happy' and being liberated from self suffering. Maybe you will see the value in finding that freedom from self suffering regardless of whether you have any of those comforts in life, as someone else put it, or you don't. When we are self suffering it doesn't matter whether we have those comforts or not, we still suffer. When we have liberation it doesn't matter if we have the comforts or not, we are free from self suffering.

Form, formless.... and.... formish....... ....or just transcend the duality instead of creating another separation.

Fear is a natural emotional response and I would suggest to initially affirm to yourself that you aren't afraid of fear and being afraid. When the mind/body is experiencing some form of fear look at it through the mind's eye of your awareness to create some distinction between that fear being felt and your awareness of that fear which you aren't afraid of that fear. Even if you don't know why you are feeling that fear, where it came from, or aren't going to 'face it', examine it or anything some may suggest to try to deal with it just by us not being afraid of the fear will mitigate it's overall effect in us. By not actively 'agreeing with' or 'endorsing' or 'believing' that fear in our intention we are not empowering it reflexively. Then from that place in our awareness with our intention we can deal with the thing that is being feared without being gripped by the fear. Over time the mind will become conditioned to not immediately and reflexively believing the 'fear' and ultimately the mind's conditioning will express less subconscious fear of that thing or situation that we will feel or experience. Doing this unbelief tactic initially in coordination with any of those other possible methods or techniques to address it can have much more lasting effect in managing any fear we feel.

I sometimes fall asleep into the dream of illusion just post here.

Who is bumping? Or... why is who bumping this? Exactly......

@Aakash Then there is 'nothing' to talk about....

Is it illusory bliss and amazement of nothingness?

You all have quite the imagination to talk a whole lot about nothing.....

Transcend the notion of 'absolute infinity' because it's just another mystical sounding concept that spiritualists use to create an identity of having something deep and esoteric they know. The ultimate ramification is it's a distraction from awareness of being present in the moment by getting someone caught up in mental masturbation.

Just be at peace....you can add socks to that peace but if you have no socks then you are still being at peace....with cold feet.