molosku

Or this? Check mate, consciousletts!

Go out, find a heroin junkie and ask him why he does not just like, play basketball or follow his dreams instead of shooting up heroin, as he is free to decide to do so and he does not have to be involved. He will tell you how complex of a thing addiction really is, and why you cant just out intellectualize it. And then shoot up some more heroin. Read "The possible evolution of man and his psychology". Man is not nearly as free to do as he likes as you imply.

You are holding non-materialistic and materialistic beliefs at the same time, so there is some aspect to this being-aware-of-knowing-of-stuff thing that you have not quite thought trough yet. I highly recommend "The nature of consciousness" by Rubert Spira. It will be the first book to burn if materialists ever start an inquisition.

"Consciousness has nothing to do with spirituality" --> 103 replies. Jesus christ... Well? Are we going to bag our bags now? Was it all for nothing?

"Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness" wow. Probably the most profound thing I have ever read about happiness. Great share! I have another one for you: "" - Ramana Maharshi

@OBEler Everything that could ever be talked about is a concept that refers to an appearance of something that is (ultimately falsely) distinct in the substance of consciousness. To be under the illusion of ego, is to confuse your true self with the WAY the true self is manifested. Classic example is a wave thinking that it dies once it hits the shore. This is both yes and no, but only because language is so tricky. Only awareness is aware (of the body manifestation).

I'm a firm believer that in any circumstances, there is absolutely NO reason to try to make a proud, god fearing, church going female to do the satanic act of squirting. Nowhere in the Bible that is adviced.

To read what the 8 posters who post 80% of all content on this forum are disagreeing about today. Also sometimes I post for reasons unknown to me.

+1 +1 +1 Great thread, great share. That list is pretty exhaustive and I cant come up with anything to add right now. One thing that could be added is a dedicated sublist of enlightenment traps and move all the spiritual related points there, as there are plenty of them! This thread should maybe be stickied in time @Nahm @Leo Gura? There is much discussion about traps in the enlightenment stickies in the spirituality subforum, but gathering stuff in one place could be a good resource. I'll start with a few. These are all from the seekers perspective, before any glimpses or breaktroughs Being dogmatic about any school or practise Not exploring various perspectives Not reading theory/reading too much theory Starting enlightenment wars Theorizing and conceptualizing enlightenment Trying to have someone else's experience (that guy got enlightened with zen meditation, I will now only do zazen!) Trying too much/trying too little Chasing states (all states change, the substance where all states occur does not) Getting stuck in your mind "why I dont get it?" "why Im stuck in this body?" "I just want the ego to die already!" "Who is it who perceives me perceiving this though and who is it who asks this question, who who who who who....." Getting caught up in words (awareness, emptiness, I, me....) Worrying too much about what you should do vs. what you should not do Not recognizing belief from direct experience Not questioning your beliefs radically enough Dismissing psychedelics / doing too much psychedelics Believing enlightenment is hard Not recognizing the limits of any spiritual teacher/teaching Not recognizing the difference and limitations of both pre and post awakened advice Making practices chores you MUST do Dismissing the body and humanity Going overboard with diets/fasting Dismissing feelings and their source Ignoring bodily functions and natural needs of the body in general Celibacy as a method (sex is a distraction yes but so is a mind clouded in sexual thoughts, try it if you feel its part of your path) Hurting the body (the usefulness/reward ratio of straight up physical pain is questionable, although it has been tried and practiced succesfully by individuals) Believing there are problems Creating a path where the is none (I'll be closer to enlightenment when I have done x amount of yoga and y amount of meditation) Believing any part of experience is "blocking" you from seeing the truth ("Thoughts are a problem" is a though about thoughts) "Stopping the practice when you leave the cushion" Not making a commitment of life long seeking. The seeking will end when the time is right. Not conjuring massive amounts of patience and perseverance Not recognizing ducks as the superior spiritual teachers Feel free to edit your post @Sahil Pandit with my contribution if you will

Meditation is never useless in the context of becoming enlightened, Leo petting a rock with a feather comes to mind. What is useless however, is holding a belief that x type of meditation is useless in the context of becoming enlightened. Not because of the content of the belief (I understand your particular point), but because it is a belief. Beliefs are always late, reality is NOW. No, no one should anything. Another belief. +1 Why you insist you need to take steps towards something, especially if you know it is not there? Isn't that just insanity? What are you trying to become aware of, if you know that that thing is not there? There is something to kill only if you want to believe so. (I also understand what you are trying to say, just a reminder ;P)

oh who the hell knows...

@pluto Yes! I felt reeeeally relaxed for the whole day afterwards. It was quite unexpected.

One experience. It was a one hour long session, but time passed waaaay faster there compared to meditation for example. it Felt like max 35 minutes. Being a first timer it was initially quite hard to get to a relaxed position, I was hitting the sides of the tank all the time because of the small waves that I generated going in to the tank (I realized I had to be absolutely still and just wait the bumps out). But yeah, I would definitely wanted to stay for longer, at least 3 hours. During my time there I did not experience anything significant, but I did have a pretty good self inquiry moment there. Also a sense of "I have no idea how "I" am positioned in space right now" It was was not a bang for buck, although it could be powerful if practiced more frequently I suppose. One thing I would also add that it was not nearly as intense as people often report. Maybe it's a personal thing, but I did not experience any anxiety or fear or anything, and I even have a moderate claustrophobia. I'm not planning to do it again any time soon, but when I eventually do float again, I will float longer and maybe take a small dose of mushrooms. All this said: go ahead and try it! Definitely worth a try

"Different practises work for different people at different times" - Shinzen Young Heres my spin of another Shinzen quote I cant quite find right now: "If concentrating makes you tense, try do nothing. If do nothing makes you lazy, try concentrating"

that was a kiss from the divine my dude, now study non-dual theory some more and begin the pathless path to the gateless gate

Ultimately, we can only guess. It's not nearly as self evident as it might seem. Heres some questions to think about: Eckhart also talks about how only animals that live close to humans, can show signs of "human" emotions, such as shame or guilt. Ever seen those funny videos where dogs "deny" they made a mess or are ashamed by it? Can a truly enlightened being be overwhelmed by shame? Animals must have a primitive ego to tell what parts of their sense perceptions are essential to that organisms survival and what are not. All animals protect themselves against death, that is their natural instinct, but that does not mean that they have any "idea" why. Enlightenment tells you that life and death are mere illusions and appearances, but that does not mean that enlightened people (or beings) off themselves right after realization because they have nothing to defend anymore, it just that death does not matter. Elephants are intelligent and they seem to recognize their dead relatives, monkeys mourn their dead relatives too, even whales show signs of this. But does that still tell anything about the actual understanding of death, and what would that even mean? We cant know. Self defense COULD mean that animals deeply associate their being to the sense perceptions of "their" bodies, and thus there would be "me, a tortoise, apart from the world" and thusly they would not be enlightened, but it might just as well not mean that. But what is association? Can animals "associate"? What does that even mean? How an animal would self reflect and associate itself? Is a "mind" necessary? Is mind something that all beings have? Does it depend on the species? Too many open questions. --- Only reason I personally know that anyone except me can self reflect, is because we have this mindblowing thing called language. We can talk about self reflection, and we can talk about (our)selves. Does self reflection even make sense as a concept, if you cannot verbally communicate it to your "self" or others? Is self-reflection just built in language, or is it something deeper than that? Is self reflection in language just a human way to do it? Every question about "are animals enlightened" always circles back to the age old question "how does it feel like to be a spider". We do not, and cannot know. I agree. As guesses go, "animals are far MORE "enlightened" than most humans" feels like a good one. But cats? Hell yeah they are fully enlightened, just look at them in the eyes My pet belief about this ? (pun fully intended) All animals have a deep feeling of "I am".

Alan watts comes to mind, he talks a lot about games. Being attached to winning is like being attached to living, once you awaken you see that life is nothing but a series of games. You can participate and play your "im a human being and i should be taken seriously" - role, while being conscious that its all just a game. Compare this to someone who plays the game but does not know its a game, so winning or losing is a big deal, its the ultimate deal: to live or to die. In your situation, when you are attached to winning, maybe it is the case that you are not conscious that its a game. It really does not matter who wins or loses, when the game ends we all continue living just like before. Now you just have a memory of what happened. Personally you lost, and feel bad about it, because you didnt get to experience the joy of winning like the other person did. You have a certain self image about yourself as a winner and a striver, but even if you strive and you lose you feel bad about not matching up to thay self image. If you have been self avtualizing for a while it probably does not surprise you that all this comes back to, and springs from your sense of self, a seperate being from the rest of the universe. What we all REALLY want is peace and love, quite simply because that is what you are: you want to return to yourself, the true self. Its not as much about winning or losing as a polarity, more like resistance and acceptance. You cant accept losing so you resist it, and it causes inner friction. Every form of negativity is always caused by the master reason: resistance. Thats something we all struggle with, but one can improve in acceptance quite a bit over a lifetime. Practise acceptance, practise awareness ... And check out mr Watts

Who has a problem with the mind? Only mind has problem with the mind.

If you have done psychedelics, and experienced yourself that they burn spiritual holes in you and damage you, by all means, don't do psychedelics. How ever, you can only know you, not anyone else. For most people, psychedelics are a great catalyst for personal and spiritual growth. The traps of psychedelics have been discussed here throughly, and also in Leos videos. There is delusion and then there is enlightenment, there is no mix of those two.

But the question is, are you conscious of it? If not, get to work!

Those of you who are going to trip anytime soon, try this: Ingest the dose Sit down comfortably on a sofa Dont move for at least 3-4 hours Dont even move a finger I _highly_ recommend

Contemplating your own death is such a powerful thing. I have been thinking about my own death for almost every day for some time now. Most of the population lives in a state of unaware denial, and I don't blame them: contemplating your own death is not enforced in our culture, more like the opposite. Death is everywhere: in the news, in movies, TV, books... the "light must win darkness" theme is all over global culture, and for a good reason but STILL people take their lives completely for granted. Every moment when you are not thinking about your death, you are by definition unaware of it. You walk around as you are immortal, death does not touch you and for you it even does not exist. But then you remember.... shit :S. Yeah people die in stories (movies, tv etc.) all the time but thats not death, thats a... thing that happens in stories, it is a mere plot device. I'm lucky to live a life so far where no one that I have a real emotional connection has died. I can only imagine when eventually that happens... man, that will hit home. That will sting BAD and that will be like a lightning of reality right into my guts. I recently had an LSD trip where I remembered "oh yeah, I will die, this crazy joke of life will end and thats it for this body" and at first I kinda laughed at the mystery and weirdness of the whole thing... but then I got serious. VERY serious. I asked myself "What if a doctor told me RIGHT NOW that I have only one year to live" and as I asked that, because I was tripping, that scenario hit me REALLY hard and it felt really, REALLY real (Im under 25 years old btw). My hands started shaking, it felt like my insides made a subtle backflip and had to sit down. I was afraid, I was sad and yeah... just afraid. I already tasted the denial in that scenario: "No, you must be wrong, it cant be, do the tests again" etc. Yeah the soul wont die and it is eternal, but the body is limited and will perish and that is something everyone will have to deal with. Think about it. Just think about what it means. Think about your childhood, of utter ignorant bliss. Think about old age. Think about how you will feel when you know there cant be more than 20, 10, 5 or a few years of your life left. Death is the ultimate perspective check up tool.

You will be fine, take max 3g if you are really anxious and afraid.

Hitting on women is spiritual work? I wonder if the buddha went clubbing often back in the days... I know jesus must have had some crazy groupies at least.