SOUL

This "entirely subjective" experience you speak of is the very element you are ignoring and dismissing in asserting the "beauty of life" being absent is actually what transcends any or all of anything and everything to create it for each of us. Your personal truth and belief paradigm which limits your own potential to be fulfilled and enjoy life in your own mind does not actually limit the potential of others to be fulfilled and enjoy life in real life, your belief limits just your own.. but not others... at all...

@star ark This is why our underpants may appear to be missing and some can perpetually be searching for them.. The more specific and complicated the teaching the less likely it will apply to each of us because the lesson for every individual is as infinitely divergent as the unfulfilled potential of perception itself. ------------------------------------- Why do you believe this and make it so? This is belief.... all of it. Belief is a tool... ...for enlightening or endarkening... ...for awakening or enslumbering... ...for liberation or enslavement... ...for creation or destruction... ...or both....and or neither... ...infinitely...and absolutely. So be it

I find that "better" is a conditional term that doesn't lend itself to universal interpretation.

Opinions you agree with = honest Opinions you don't agree with = dishonest So transparent...

@Mighty Mouse You delude yourself into thinking your beliefs are facts, that much is obvious. Not to mention the OP thrashes around in this thread demanding proof and that it doesn't matter showing how much it really does matter to them yet without evidence to support their opinion.

That dystopian nihilistic paradigm you think you see all that life as is merely your own personal truth and is not "absolute truth", don't delude yourself into believing you have any special insight but it appears you may already be steeped in it. Just because you have bought into a nihilistic belief system so view your own life through the prism of it doesn't make it the truth for everyone, it's just yours and you foisting this belief system onto others is just you unable to emotionally and/or intellectually deal with your own personal truth. I live my life the way I see fit as you do yours but keep in mind if you choose to inflict abuse on another person it's not just an abstract argument of philosophy or merely a belief, it's being abusive.

So now you are going to tell me what I don't have to or need to do? Well, my friend, what you say about it and your "insight" is no truth in my life in the least, I can view my own experience any way I see fit.... that is the point! You saying there is no point, no need or anything you want about it isn't any absolute truth or more right or accurate or anything other than your view of your life.... not mine about my life. You questioning my choice for my own life is merely the fruit of your own misery and suffering but I don't have to endure it, that's on you. I choose to live a fulfilled and joyful life while I am alive in any way I see fit for my own experience, you can do whatever you see fit for your own life but your "insight" is useless to me. Your nihilistic dystopia is of your own creating, it doesn't belong to anyone but you.

The point of this life for me is to live a fulfilled and joyful life..... ending it makes that more difficult. So, I'm not sure what "insight" you think you had but it doesn't appear even remotely relevant for my own experience, I may need more insight into the "insight" you claim to have had.

@alyra Awareness observes, although through our intentional life we create experience like the painter that paints, self conscious collects the experience as a canvas collects the paint, identity is merely the expression of that experience as a painting is the expression of the artist. So we can make our life an intentional masterpiece of joy and fulfillment or it can be an accidental and random expression of misery and suffering. If the ego really does die in the consciousness, there would be no memory of it happening, it wouldn't be told and there would be nothing to teach. So if someone does speak of it and teach it to others, it hasn't happened for them but it's just another story to tell they heard from someone else that they believe with no experience of it themselves.

It's really very simple and I could explain how simple it is though people prefer to complicate it so won't embrace the simple. Instead they seek out the complicated, once one decides to search for the simplicity it will be found.

Ego creates an identity from our experience, this identity can be as separate or unified as we allow it to be and we intend it to be. If we cease to believe in the identity the ego has created previously and instead identify with another that may be altogether different than what was identified with before it is through our 'belief' that this agreement with the identity happens. Even identifying with an infinite absolute nothingness saying we don't exist and calling everything else in life an illusion, a deception and false is done through belief. The ego will eventually identify with whatever we believe in no matter the idea or concept by calling it 'truth' and call everything it's doesn't as 'false' to justify the identification. In experience we can transcend it all through awareness but as long as we have a body that possesses a brain which produces mind the ego collects that experience into identity....even if it is one of awareness transcending it all.

I'm not sure I could find a more useless belief for my own experience than this and I don't think I'd try

This is the literal definition of belief..... If enlightenment is just being present and accepting what is as it is it appears that they are complementary not contradictory.

@egoless I didn't make any such claim about that, the only one I did make was to the extent of unawareness of the beliefs in this thread and my amazement of it.

A bull diagram on enlightenment?.....sure, why not.

This thread is so filled with beliefs it amazes me that people proclaiming to be using their awareness are so unaware of it.

@Joseph Maynor @pluto As JoMay spoke to, judge not your self judging, just observe the ego make it's measure as someone else in this thread mentioned in their measure of this thread. If we judge our self judging we perpetuate judgment not cease it, we are telling our ego that 'judging' is bad/wrong in trying to stop it but we are also telling it judging judgment is good/right by judging it. It's contradiction and sets up an environment for distress and turmoil within us so just observe the ego doing it and don't agree or endorse it with intent by judging judgment, it empowers this identity as conflicted as it may be. Eventually the ego will reflexively express in our mind this pattern we intend for it so it unifies with our awareness in judgment free observing instead. It is this obviously simple once the illusion dogma veil is dropped from the eyes of our awareness. @Slade As far as finding some litmus test for consciousness... what purpose does judging how 'conscious' we are serve our self? What itch does that scratch in your psyche? What desire does it quench in the ego? Try asking yourself those questions to see how conscious you really are, it will reveal much about your consciousness.

There is life after 'awakening' though.... once we are at peace with just being, observing the unfolding and in acceptance, we can interact with our life intentionally without attachment to it. In this presence of being is the genuine expression of fulfillment and enjoyment, the monk can come out of the cave and walk their bliss in life.

It's easy to get to this realization of being now, it's a challenge to not get distracted by the story of it. There's nothing inherently 'bad' about the story, that would be just another story, but finding peace and fulfillment in simply observing the story unfold without attachment to it is something our minds aren't naturally predisposed to do. Of course not having attachment is just another story..... sooooooo...... just be.........

All my posts have awareness, self and ego in them otherwise I wouldn't be able function like a human being enough to post it... well, that and neither the dog or cat can type.

So be it! *Infinite thumbs*

Yup, I guess every story has a beginning, middle and end...otherwise there's no story, nobody to hear it and no teller of it which brings my mind back to existence of being that birthed the big bang of story.... it is infinitely and absolutely now here... can you hear it?

...of being now here.

So be it....

@snowleopard Or ontological fulfillment, the ultimate infinite 'spiral dynamic' of existence and this physical manifest we dance around in is merely the story of it's evolution.