SOUL

After many years of not discussing my own ongoing experience and evolution in awakening I eventually chose to engage in discussions because I see other people self suffering and they deserve healing, we all do. I don't really wish to talk about my 'story' as much as I am interested in empowering each individual personal experience in their own expression of it as it is to allow the healing to happen for them. So when there are people asserting 'what is' or 'is not' in a 'universal' and 'for everyone' way I know that this can bring even more self suffering to others because it doesn't match their own experience and they will doubt themselves. I know this because I experienced it first hand but fortunately I go to the source for my revelation not other people so I always found healing for this suffering. Though, not everyone is this fortunate, they seek guidance in others and their own personal experience is dismissed. This is why I question the authoritative stances that are taken and I embrace the diversity of expression in the experiences of individuals. The healing that comes in the inner lives of those that are suffering is more important than me telling my 'story' or about my 'ideas'. Awakening happens when people realize their own personal truth as they experience it, the healing that comes from this resolution transcends 'ideology' and is genuine liberation, it's absolute inner peace. I hope that those who have experiences which don't mirror the ones of those who declare that this is the way it is or is not will be encouraged by me standing true to individual personal experience. There is no truth in capitulating in conformity to 'enlightenment' group think because someone else claims 'absolute truth'. The healing for our own self suffering is our 'truth', it's as individual as each one of us are and we experience it by awakening our awareness to the absolute infinite source in us.

Well, for one thing, watch that you don't chop your foot, it's a foot in unity but it still hurts.

That experience is so fulfilling and this is the first time sharing it but it's just a story.

@Shanmugam Whatever you 'say' brother, haha

It is binary because you make it that way. This has been what I have been explaining again and again, you belie... er.... "know" is it binary so it is binary for you in your experience. Not me... not anyone else, for you. If someone else, anyone else belie... er "knows" it for themselves then it is for them in their experience but not for me in mine or anyone else who doesn't have that experience. So if you are still teaching "binary enlightenment", and binary is duality, I have to ask......are you teaching this "enlightenment" teaching from separation? According to your own words if you have the experience of enlightenment that duality is broken forever. So you are still teaching a duality/binary enlightenment..... not my words... your words.... not my belief, it's yours.... not my experience, yours... I don't "know" it, you do. I'm not saying you are "wrong", I'm saying you are "right" for your own experience since you create it that way. It's not really there, it's an illusion, but as you said in "enlightenment is breaking the duality forever" and that's because it wasn't ever to begin with.

Well, that is so gracious of you, I appreciate the endorsement of an authority on "enlightenment" such as you. I came in suddenly, huh? How does someone suddenly post a question? Is there an 'unsudden' way to post a question on a forum? Should I have warned you in a separate reply first that I was going to ask a question so it wouldn't be unexpected? The purpose of the question is to get an answer about if someone doesn't mirror what you say about it would you conclude they are "not enlightened" since that is in the title of your thread and the message of the post. You have quite an extensive criteria with "enlightenment" and "absolute infinite" that you write about for someone being "enlightened" or "not", so what is puzzling about the question on it? I have only been examining words and the ideas they represent in our conversations but if you weren't identifying with your words and ideas so strongly you wouldn't see a "problem" with me discussing it with you, there would be no conflict in you about it and you surely wouldn't react to it like this: So be it.

be·lief an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists. trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something. This is the basic definition of belief. So with this in view it is quite easy to see how limiting beliefs can create separation in awareness. The 'absolute infinite' isn't bound by our beliefs about it, there isn't any line or possibility it doesn't cross of fulfill. To say it "doesn't" or is "not" is establishing a limit in our perception of the infinite, just a limit in our awareness of it and isn't accurate because the infinite is unlimited otherwise it isn't infinite, see? Even if we set up some limit to what we 'believe' about the infinite, by it's genuine nature the infinite crosses that limitation we have set up in our mind. It's just our perception in our awareness of the infinite not being it and isn't the infinite not actually being it. Yes, it is imaginary, it is an image of the infinite we would have that limits our perception in our awareness of the infinite, they are imagined limits not actual limits. We create these imaginary boundaries when we have beliefs that limit our access or interaction with the infinite, they don't really exist, the infinite really is on both sides of this imagined boundary or limitation, we just aren't aware of it. Self, as a natural bodily 'sense', and the ego, as a mental construct, set up a separation between itself and everything to create the sense of self and an identity. This separation is perceived in consciousness so transcending the sense of separation and awakening to unity is the same as removing our limiting beliefs about the infinite. I am not suggesting we should not believe anything or that anyone is wrong for believing something or people shouldn't talk about it at all. What I am doing by speaking on it is bringing to awareness that by what we believe, what we accept as true and accept exists, we create the perception in our awareness of the infinite but not actually perceive the infinite as it is. That is trying to fit the infinite into our belief box and believing it only exists in our belief box but all that is doing is limiting our perception of the infinite. So, in reality, infinite actually fills all belief boxes that ever are believed and even more, it's infinite, we are only limiting what we may be aware of it as, not limiting what it is. So in my own experience if I am to talk about anything in teaching to awaken I will choose to speak about becoming aware of our sense of separation and our belief limitations so we may transcend them and be aware of unity in absolute infinite if that is what one intends. I also speak to healing, well being and inner peace, these aren't separate from awakening but they may have different words for who I am speaking to. You are welcome to talk about whatever you see fit although I will speak my peace as well. Hm

@Heart of Space That is where this started, asking about the personal perspective from experience but ultimately our well being and liberation from self induced suffering is the fruit of inner peace.

I only point them out to people who state that beliefs are negative in some way to alert them to theirs. If they think negatively about them then hidden or unconscious beliefs can be negative for them as per their beliefs about them. Words are how people post and reveal their ideas and beliefs so of course that's what I would point to on a forum. I personally don't believe that beliefs are inherently negative, they are natural psychological trust mechanisms and have no bias to them that we don't give them. We all have beliefs. I guess you are projecting your own negative perspective of beliefs onto me alerting others of unconscious beliefs. Besides, believing beliefs are negative is a limiting belief.... haha.

Those were just from your initial post, I guess they all are only limitations of language and not limiting beliefs, right? Haha!

@Shanmugam I had just written a detailed reply but decided to erase it because it's pointless to dissect all the statements you have made when it all revolves around the same thing. You put so many limitations with can'ts and don'ts on enlightenment, absolute and infinite that it's so funny... limitations on the infinite! Really? Then call it "truth"? Haha! The absolute infinite has absolutely infinite potential, it's our own limiting beliefs that create a narrow path to realizing it. Separation dissolves in awakening to this simple "truth" and is pure love, joy, peace....bliss

Ok, so you say it's either you are or you are no tand there are no increments or degrees of it, another may say it isn't like that at all. As an example, there is no binary on-off position to enlightenment at all, that it's always there, we are always enlightened and there are many incremental degrees of awakening to that ever present enlightenment with all of those degrees still being enlightenment. That's very much different than your description, not just a different word choice or different articulation of it, it's completely different. So can these be this same "absolute truth" and "enlightenment"?

Well, you are describing many varieties aspects of this "absolute truth" and "enlightenment", even in this passage that I quote here as well as in the opening post and throughout the thread. Does everyone's experience of it have to mirror your descriptions exactly or you will say they are "not"?

So "the same" as you say this "absolute truth" is?

@Shanmugam So if I have a different personal experience of it than you say it is are you going to tell me I'm "not"?

When someone isn't ready, open or seeking to grow there isn't much anyone else can do or say to inspire or motivate them to want it. If your portrayal is accurate it is why she prefers to just complain about it instead of become active in working to transform it. Unfortunately, when you talk about it she sees it from the perspective of someone not wanting to do it so it's negatively received even if it's positively intended from you. By you speaking on it is likely a reminder of her choice to do as she does and not to change it so it adds to the inner angst she is thinking and feeling. Until she is ready to genuinely address it any input will be viewed with a negative bias that will make it difficult to bring about lasting change in her behavior and probably result in more uncomfortable circumstances and 'indelicate' conversations.

There is considerable naive mysticism within spirituality so it produces extreme mythical and magical ideologies that are denying and distorting of the physical manifest. Just as there is considerable naive realism within materialism that produces nihilist and cynical ideologies that are denying and distorting of the subjective metaphysical experience. Uniting into a whole experience accepting it for what it is as a holistic life appears to be one of the rarest pursuits, a realist spirituality or a spiritual realism... either way, it's seems to be the path least traveled but for my own life it's the way that is most fulfilling.

Both science and spirituality share a common blind spot, that there is some knowledge commonly seen as 'true' that is actually false. Science has a mechanism for eventually exposing this false knowledge through continuing use of the scientific method to discover and bring better understanding. Spirituality doesn't have such a mechanism and with it's subjective interpretation of experience someone or groups and even over many generations an assumption of 'truth' will persist about something that is actually false. So a 'dogma' in science can fall away if evidence reveals it to be false but in spirituality and religion those dogmas can remain with them potentially gaining strength of influence through group think belief in those tenets alone.

This is a thread about staying blissful surrounded by unpleasant realities....oh the irony. Laughter can work.... haha

@Joseph Maynor I don't know why you feel the need to heed your ego's desire to lecture others using other people's "stories" but you can rewrite that script. ....Baha! Oh... and just because you have chosen to believe that a story and belief free story is something preferable to you doesn't make it any more of a universal truth.

Life evolved a sense of self to keep us alive and evolved an ego to keep us interested enough to voluntarily join in but with awareness we can rewrite the script.

Go into the store and buy another bar but put it back in the aisle, you don't even have to tell anyone you did it or stop fixating on it, that'll work, too.

Use the same unattached observer technique of inner work while viewing media, it surely can be disheartening and frustrating with what is going on but when viewed through that spiritual perspective it's almost comical if it weren't causing so much distress in people. The media learned that pandering to the identity politics of us vs them made them more money than unbiased reporting does so they will eagerly cause emotional distress to get paid and act like they are noble in doing so. Or just not give them the eyeballs at all by finding sources that don't profit off of inciting misery, maybe just not look at it at all.

@Serotoninluv Well, with weather there are constants, the mountains, valleys and other topographical features don't move much. Then add that to the increasing understanding of how weather is formed and behaves as well as the data base of previous weather conditions and data tracking so of course "predicting weather" becomes more of a known quantity. Same thing with DNA, as we learn and we accumulate a database of understanding from experimentation added to the new knowledge that will come we will have a better base of understanding and manipulating the variables, however many of them there are, to get accurate results. Now consider the number of variables that are at work in the universe.... is it a stretch to consider them an infinite number? How could we count them anyway? How could we even account for them? Sure science does a pretty good job of observing effects but that's all it is, watching and from that having an understanding of how it behaves. They then call that the "cause" of them but it's just a behavior effect. Just like your name, scientists suggest love is merely a chemical reaction because they see the correlation between the chemicals and the feeling. They say the chemicals cause the love but if that were true every instance of the chemical would cause the feeling, but that's not the case since the chemicals correlate to more than just those feelings. So maybe the subjective experience of love is accompanied by the chemical reaction, not the chemicals causing it. It's recognizing the indeterminate interacting with the determinate as a whole and possibly why Da Vinci had an insight that transcended mere knowledge accumulation, it's recognizing the whole just like you said, a holistic approach.

@Serotoninluv I'm just using that term to communicate that it's a whole lot of them but why assume it's not an infinite number of them? Or even suggest its limited to quadrillions of them?