The fallacy of self help

[Breakingthewall]

There's a very seductive spiritual current that says: if you suffer, it's because you're causing it. Stop causing it, and you'll stop suffering. How do you cause it? With your thoughts. The self is only a thought; stop thinking, and you'll stop suffering. Focus on the NOW, and suffering, that error of the human mind, disappears.

This is absolutely false, simplistic, and very stupid. Conduct an experiment: torture a dog three times a day for years, terrorize it. We'll see if it's still in the NOW without suffering (do that experiment only in your mind btw).

As humans, the energetic structure that forms the self is absolutely real, as real as your physical body. If you have a broken bone in your leg, even if you focus on the NOW, it will hurt and you won't be able to walk, no matter how much Tolle, Mooji, Ramana Maharsi, and their friends tell you that you're creating that problem. If your emotional reality has resulted in a structure that fears, shames, humiliates, limits, coerces, or is inadequate, then that structure is as real as a brain tumor. Both can be reversed, but both can kill you. Denying them, like an 8-year-old thinking they don't exist if you don't see them, will be useless. 

Worse than useless, it will castrate the possibilities of true reversal, of openness to reality. Denying the self as "just a thought" locks you in, because it's false; it's simplifying the complex by denying it. Surely for Ramana Maharsi, it was like that, because he lacked an egoic structure; he was one among millions, an oddball, not an example at all. And based on that example, which isn't exemplary, many have created a doctrine that sells. It sells because it promises results without real work. It's all in your mind, then, you let it go and...tadah! It no longer exists.

No, my friend, if you're terrified of death, you must look it in the face. If you're terrified of others, you must confront them and open yourself to them really. Nothing comes for free! This is reality. Evasion leads to dead ends, aka hell. The real path is direct, harsh, and without shortcuts. Human life is a mission. If you think you're going to fulfill it by staying in a bubble, without real risk, well, a major slap in the face is waiting for you. The end of the mission is opening your heart without reservation, in it is what you are looking for, the absolute, your true nature. To do that all the limits must be broken, and those limits are uncoded in your genes, in your mental waves, in your muscles, in your body, in all your structure. They are real and deep, don't underestimate them, it doesn't work. Internal is interconnected with external, are one, deny the external reality as an "illusion" is a trap. 

Edited June 21 by Breakingthewall

[gettoefl]

Do not deny. but do refuse to see. Big difference. When you leave the house, you will see evil and wickedness. You have orchestrated it. You want to see it. Your eyes and senses obey you. You have made it real. What you yourself make real however is nothing! That's what nothing is. What you make! Your task is to catch yourself. I am doing everything here. I don't deny it. But I am going to continuously perform a miracle out there and not see it. Whatever changes isn't real. I am going to whack a mole every time something changeable and disturbing hits my consciousness. I am going to see perfection in its place. Behold I am a miracle worker. Glory be to God and thank you Jesus for showing me the light. Amen.

[Breakingthewall]

16 minutes ago, gettoefl said:

Do not deny. but do refuse to see. Big difference. When you leave the house, you will see evil and wickedness. You have orchestrated it. You want to see it. Your eyes and senses obey you. You have made it real. What you yourself make real however is nothing! That's what nothing is. What you make! Your task is to catch yourself. I am doing everything here. I don't deny it. But I am going to continuously perform a miracle out there and not see it. Whatever changes isn't real. I am going to whack a mole every time something changeable and disturbing hits my consciousness. I am going to see perfection in its place. Behold I am a miracle worker. Glory be to God and thank you Jesus for showing me the light. Amen.

Avoidance doesn't work; things are much simpler. Face your fear, understand it, accept it, and then confront it. Layer upon layer, until nothing remains. There's no distinction between inside and outside. Life clearly explains what it expects of you. There is not scape, the only way is through it. 

[theleelajoker]

14 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

Avoidance doesn't work; things are much simpler. Face your fear, understand it, accept it, and then confront it. Layer upon layer, until nothing remains. There's no distinction between inside and outside. Life clearly explains what it expects of you. There is not scape, the only way is through it. 

Resonates. With some disclaimer on "life clearly tells you".... sometimes I feel that I these directions are covered by layers of conditioning that makes it hard for me to have a clear picture.

Yeah sure it can be figured out, others help me, life gives pointers in my experience but evasion can be very tricky because conditioning not only hides what we are avoiding but also that we are avoiding. 

But the general message of your posts: I am with you. And the more I seek interaction, honesty, openness and intimate and authentic connections with others, the better things tend to get.

And I'm tired of the "no self nothing exists etc etc". Whatever you call it, the energetic structure exists and I can feel that is has some movement. Now "my job" is to align with it as best as possible 

Edited June 21 by theleelajoker

[Javfly33]

Usually suffering is what is needed to grow. 

The path to hell feels like heaven. 

The path to heaven feels like hell. 

Now I'm on a completely different level of experience, but last 3-4 months were absolute terror where several times planned killing myself because it was simply too intense to handle what I was going through. 

But now is clear that was necessary for the next level of freedom and expansion. 

And you also understand why growth happens very slowly: you see pain is inevitable and you don't want to go there. But if you don't go there voluntarily anyway Reality will put you there sooner or later. 

Edited June 21 by Javfly33

[gettoefl]

1 hour ago, Breakingthewall said:

Avoidance doesn't work; things are much simpler. Face your fear, understand it, accept it, and then confront it. Layer upon layer, until nothing remains. There's no distinction between inside and outside. Life clearly explains what it expects of you. There is not scape, the only way is through it. 

Fear is a mistaken interpretation. Nobody mentioned avoid or inside outside. You just correct. It is unreality. You do it to yourself. You need the world around you to practice seeing in order to unsee. It's simple and wholly miraculous. What you don't see does flee. You are now a fit vessel to tell others that there isn't fear. They can awaken too.

Edited June 21 by gettoefl

[Breakingthewall]

9 minutes ago, gettoefl said:

Fear is a mistaken interpretation

Fear is absolutely real, an energetic structure of enormous strength genetically encoded. Let's see if they're going to blind you, cut off your hands, and abandon you in the middle of the forest whether you're afraid or not.

1 hour ago, theleelajoker said:

And I'm tired of the "no self nothing exists etc etc".

That's just scapism that is very seductive when you are suffering. Spirituality is natural selection. The most seductive thing is what sells the most and spreads the most. It is then accepted as true and spreads more because the masters who incorporate that code are accepted. its so simple right? Just stop thinking and everything is right. Has a zebra in the savannah any problem? Then, why are you suffering? Just be. Maybe it could works if you have a lobotomy in the frontal lobe

1 hour ago, Javfly33 said:

And you also understand why growth happens very slowly: you see pain is inevitable and you don't want to go there. But if you don't go there voluntarily anyway Reality will put you there sooner or later. 

Yeah, the only way is absolute honesty with yourself. 

[gettoefl]

3 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

Fear is absolutely real, an energetic structure of enormous strength genetically encoded. Let's see if they're going to blind you, cut off your hands, and abandon you in the middle of the forest whether you're afraid or not.

What you believe is real for you and your world. You make it ergo you live it. You are naturally afraid. Everyone is. What you make real is a definition of the word nothing. Nothing means it has no absolute reality. You want to see it and so you see it. You can just as well unsee it instead and then you will enter a new realm of reality. Not absolute but tremendous.

If someone says they have cancer, I will say friend you do not and I do not see it. And they may one day say, what if he is right and I am bringing all this on myself. If he has healed himself of cancer perhaps I should heal myself too. Note this doesn't mean the cancer goes away as far the MRI shows but it has no effect any more. The lesson from earth is that nothing has any effect. It takes practice to make this reality.

[Hojo]

Yes just another hamster wheel.

How do you help a brain dead state? Stop thinking its doing something wrong.

Edited June 21 by Hojo

[Breakingthewall]

1 hour ago, Hojo said:

Yes just another hamster wheel.

How do you help a brain dead state? Stop thinking its doing something wrong.

The meaning of thoughts loses density and becomes transparent when you broaden your focus. If you're constantly creating dense thoughts, you can't stop doing so because you're doing it for a reason: to keep your focus on a point, for balance, because you're afraid of being without a concrete foundation. Focusing on the thought as a problem is focusing on the symptom, not the cause. The cause is fear. Maybe you could stop the flow of thoughts for a while at will by practice but if the fear remains you wouldn't achieve anything 

Edited June 21 by Breakingthewall

[gettoefl]

2 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

The meaning of thoughts loses density and becomes transparent when you broaden your focus. If you're constantly creating dense thoughts, you can't stop doing so because you're doing it for a reason: to keep your focus on a point, for balance, because you're afraid of being without a concrete foundation. Focusing on the thought as a problem is focusing on the symptom, not the cause. The cause is fear. Maybe you could stop the flow of thoughts for a while at will by practice but if the fear remains you wouldn't achieve anything 

Fear is, I haven't done what I came here to do and all thanks to a random roll of the dice I will breath my last so I better play it safe and pay my insurance premium. Or better yet see that why I'm here is to see that I made up fear to keep me breathing here one more day. And all for nothing too. Fear is to live a lie. Once fear is set aside, you don't have to be here any longer no matter what body does or doesn't do. Body now does its own thing. Strangely enough it can still exhibit fear. I just laugh though.

[James123]

8 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

There's a very seductive spiritual current that says: if you suffer, it's because you're causing it. Stop causing it, and you'll stop suffering. How do you cause it? With your thoughts. The self is only a thought; stop thinking, and you'll stop suffering. Focus on the NOW, and suffering, that error of the human mind, disappears.

This is absolutely false, simplistic, and very stupid. Conduct an experiment: torture a dog three times a day for years, terrorize it. We'll see if it's still in the NOW without suffering (do that experiment only in your mind btw).

As humans, the energetic structure that forms the self is absolutely real, as real as your physical body. If you have a broken bone in your leg, even if you focus on the NOW, it will hurt and you won't be able to walk, no matter how much Tolle, Mooji, Ramana Maharsi, and their friends tell you that you're creating that problem. If your emotional reality has resulted in a structure that fears, shames, humiliates, limits, coerces, or is inadequate, then that structure is as real as a brain tumor. Both can be reversed, but both can kill you. Denying them, like an 8-year-old thinking they don't exist if you don't see them, will be useless. 

Worse than useless, it will castrate the possibilities of true reversal, of openness to reality. Denying the self as "just a thought" locks you in, because it's false; it's simplifying the complex by denying it. Surely for Ramana Maharsi, it was like that, because he lacked an egoic structure; he was one among millions, an oddball, not an example at all. And based on that example, which isn't exemplary, many have created a doctrine that sells. It sells because it promises results without real work. It's all in your mind, then, you let it go and...tadah! It no longer exists.

No, my friend, if you're terrified of death, you must look it in the face. If you're terrified of others, you must confront them and open yourself to them really. Nothing comes for free! This is reality. Evasion leads to dead ends, aka hell. The real path is direct, harsh, and without shortcuts. Human life is a mission. If you think you're going to fulfill it by staying in a bubble, without real risk, well, a major slap in the face is waiting for you. The end of the mission is opening your heart without reservation, in it is what you are looking for, the absolute, your true nature. To do that all the limits must be broken, and those limits are uncoded in your genes, in your mental waves, in your muscles, in your body, in all your structure. They are real and deep, don't underestimate them, it doesn't work. Internal is interconnected with external, are one, deny the external reality as an "illusion" is a trap. 

Do not trust the language.

[Breakingthewall]

9 hours ago, James123 said:

Do not trust the language.

Language is an expression of reality not the source 

[James123]

5 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

Language is an expression of reality not the source 

Definitely. So, can you trust reality? What is the source? 

[Breakingthewall]

2 hours ago, James123 said:

Definitely. So, can you trust reality? What is the source? 

The source of reality is limitlessness, but what I was talking about was the current spirituality in which it is proposed as dogma: you suffer because you think. Stop thinking and you will stop suffering; it's your choice.

[James123]

1 minute ago, Breakingthewall said:

The source of reality is limitlessness,

This is an idea. 

2 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

but what I was talking about was the current spirituality in which it is proposed as dogma: you suffer because you think. Stop thinking and you will stop suffering; it's your choice.

 

 

[Javfly33]

6 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

The source of reality is limitlessness, but what I was talking about was the current spirituality in which it is proposed as dogma: you suffer because you think. Stop thinking and you will stop suffering; it's your choice.

I'd say yes suffering is because of mind (which is more complex than just thoughts, because when people say thoughts they usually think of language, and is more complex than that). 

However the question I'd ask is "Why the mind is so active in the first place?" 

Because there is no Clarity about what One is. If one is grounded on what One is, the mind will be silent and still all time, only responding when one wants to use it. 

[Schizophonia]

Yea but most of the time it's not about coping with torture, cluster headaches, or problems like that.

[Breakingthewall]

1 hour ago, James123 said:

This is an idea. 

No, it's something that anyone could realize if they break their limitations . 

What you are is total reality, and total reality is the absence of limits. The absence of limits inevitably results in totality. This is something that you, as total reality, can see, perceive, and understand with absolute clarity.

Then you then articulate this through the logic of language. Logic is the structure of reality. There is no difference between the logic of the mind and the logic of reality. A mind aligned with reality can understand its logic clearly because it is the reality and then articulate this logic through language 

[Breakingthewall]

1 hour ago, Schizophonia said:

Yea but most of the time it's not about coping with torture, cluster headaches, or problems like that.

The torture we are subjected to as humans is more subtle, but it leaves no less of a mark. Our social identity is genetically encoded, as is the pain you feel if you are burned. You feel psychological pain if you don't fit into the social matrix.

You are programmed to need to be accepted, valued, and loved. This programming allows humanity to be an unparalleled survival machine, but this comes at the cost of individual suffering. From childhood, your psyche is bombarded with emotions of all kinds that make you move.

An animal is hungry, cold, and needs to mate; you have thousands of nuances that mold and shape you as an individual over the years. This molding is real; it creates a solid energetic structure that you will not dissolve with neo-Advaita simplicities.