Review Ending unnecessary Suffering by Peter Ralston

[AION]

Stop ruining my thread though. 😭

[James123]

1 hour ago, Breakingthewall said:

Let's analyze your emoticons. what they mean? Your feeling of happiness by feeling (wrongly) superior?

Yeah I feel so fucking superior, because I am enlightened and you are not. 😂 What a bullshit 

I am just laughing at how mind prisoned you to feel superior or to be enlightened or to know / analyze / experience something important. 😂 

[OBEler]

5 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Definitely no feelings involved - but nice try attempting to imply I am somehow being swayed by feelings. 

You aren't analysing. You are being disingenuous. If you like, I can post all the forum history where you staunchly refused to go to the source (which would indicate a more genuine approach to analysing what Ralston is saying, the fact you continually refuse to do so and insist on others translating it is telling enough despite you insisting otherwise). But even this is probably beyond the time I am willing to put into this, because if you are this deluded to your own intentions / motivations it's not going to be worth it in the slightest.

Simply put - you come across as totally inauthentic in your attempt to truly understand because your words do not even slightly match your actions (IE insisting it is "analysing" while simultaneously refusing to go to the source - Ralston's books - to actually critically analyse and grasp, repeatedly). It is beyond reasonable to infer you are settled in your opinion and want to simply have it reinforced or simply prove a point by taking down users interpretations/strawmans of Ralston.

Read his books. 

Do the work. 

Otherwise this is all for naught.

@Breakingthewall I really like your comments and you have great insights. But please for your own growth read and understand what she writes. I recognize the same pattern of you with other gurus like sadghuru. You instantly dismiss him, although you didnt do his work. Just watching some youtube videos is nothing. He teaches yoga, so you must do the yoga exercises he teaches. After one year of every day yoga then you can maybe have some opinion on him which might be not of ignorance.  

[Breakingthewall]

3 hours ago, OBEler said:

@Breakingthewall I really like your comments and you have great insights. But please for your own growth read and understand what she writes. I recognize the same pattern of you with other gurus like sadghuru. You instantly dismiss him, although you didnt do his work. Just watching some youtube videos is nothing. He teaches yoga, so you must do the yoga exercises he teaches. After one year of every day yoga then you can maybe have some opinion on him which might be not of ignorance.  

I just want to talk about his paradigm, just to go deep in what is suffering and what is a self. Also about Buddhist paradigm. It's very interesting but you can see some contradictions. 

[Inliytened1]

33 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

I just want to talk about his paradigm, just to go deep in what is suffering and what is a self. Also about Buddhist paradigm. It's very interesting but you can see some contradictions. 

The Buddhist paradigm got a lot of it right. 

[Breakingthewall]

23 minutes ago, Inliytened1 said:

The Buddhist paradigm got a lot of it right. 

Buddhism is very coherent. The problem for me is that it's focused on subtraction, on letting go of attachment and desire in order to reach the emptiness of the mind, which is enlightenment.

As I see it, the path is openness, and it is openness that results in detachment, not the other way around. And what Buddhism calls sunyata, or essential emptiness, I see as the total fullness of what is.

If you are open to the absolute fact of being, your mind empties of content, and desire ceases, since in absolute being there is everything; there is nothing you can desire that you don't already have. This, of course, lasts for a while, during which you intentionally focus on the absolute. Afterward, you have to continue living, and this requires thousands of desires and actions, and a very deep understanding of all relationships.

Another mistake in my opinion is calling the self illusion. This is categorizing something as illusion from what you are calling illusion, because it's the self who affirm that the self is illusory. It's a mental mess that leads to confusion.  

Another mess is affirming that there is reincarnation, this is a religious belief that is quite contradictory. If the self is illusion, who reincarnates? 

[Inliytened1]

1 minute ago, Breakingthewall said:

Buddhism is very coherent. The problem for me is that it's focused on subtraction, on letting go of attachment and desire in order to reach the emptiness of the mind, which is enlightenment.

As I see it, the path is openness, and it is openness that results in detachment, not the other way around. And what Buddhism calls sunyata, or essential emptiness, I see as the total fullness of what is.

If you are open to the absolute fact of being, your mind empties of content, and desire ceases, since in absolute being there is everything; there is nothing you can desire that you don't already have. This, of course, lasts for a while, during which you intentionally focus on the absolute. Afterward, you have to continue living, and this requires thousands of desires and actions, and a very deep understanding of all relationships.

Another mistake in my opinion is calling the self illusion. This is categorizing something as illusion from what you are calling illusion, because it's the self who affirm that the self is illusory. It's a mental mess that leads to confusion.  

Another mess is affirming that there is reincarnation, this is a religious belief that is quite contradictory. If the self is illusion, who reincarnates? 

Yes. That is precisely correct.  But see its OK to call the self an illusion. You have to be able to under your very own paradigm do you not?

[Breakingthewall]

@OBEler for example , you said before that you are in a moment of suffering due a break. That's inevitable right? According Ralston, how could anyone stop suffering in such situation? Or if your son dies, etc. 

From what I watched I guess that he would say that you should contemplate who is suffering, where is the subject that is suffering, then in some point you will realize that it's not such center or self, it's an illusion, then suffering dissolves.

The problem for me is the same than Buddhism. Who is doing that contemplation is the self itself, and realizing that it doesn't exist is a contradiction. The only way to dissolve the self as a center that receive the experience is not dissolving it, it's open yourself to the absolute. The self do an action, it open itself. Then the absolute fact of being takes the protagonism, and the self lose its charge in great extent. Differentiations blur because all are the same: being. But what you can't do is removing the self from the self without any substance or support that sustain the structure of your psyche. It's impossible, your psyche would grab anything, and that anything would be the history of yourself, the contrast good /bad, the ego. 

Edited 5 hours ago by Breakingthewall

[Breakingthewall]

6 minutes ago, Inliytened1 said:

Yes. That is precisely correct.  But see its OK to call the self an illusion. You have to be able to under your very own paradigm do you not?

It's not an illusion, it's a reality. The self is all the system that creates differentiation. Without the self wouldn't be experience, everything would be the same. The point is not being focused in the differences but in the substance, but always from the self. 

[Inliytened1]

2 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

@OBEler for example , you said before that you are in a moment of suffering due a break. That's inevitable right? According Ralston, how could anyone stop suffering in such situation? Or if your son dies, etc. 

From what I watched I guess that he would say that you should contemplate who is suffering, where is the subject that is suffering, then in some point you will realize that it's not such center or self, it's an illusion, then suffering dissolves.

The problem for me is the same than Buddhism. Who is doing that contemplation is the self itself, and realizing that it doesn't exist is a contradiction. The only way to dissolve the self as a center that receive the experience is not dissolving it, it's open yourself to the absolute. The self do an action, it open itself. Then the absolute fact of being takes the protagonism, and the self lose its charge in great extent. Differentiations blur because all are the same: being. But what you can't do is removing the self from the self without any substance or support that sustain the structure of your psyche. It's impossible, your psyche would grab anything, and that anything would be the history of yourself, the contrast good /bad, the ego. 

That's not what Buddhism teaches.  You are to go through suffering  

[Inliytened1]

1 minute ago, Breakingthewall said:

It's not an illusion, it's a reality. The self is all the system that creates differentiation. Without the self wouldn't be experience, everything would be the same. The point is not being focused in the differences but in the substance, but always from the self. 

Look.  In order to enlighten yourself you will have to realize you weren't ever real.  That is a paradox.  But reality IS a paradox. That's what you arent seeing here.  You do not yet embrace paradox.  

[Breakingthewall]

2 minutes ago, Inliytened1 said:

Look.  In order to enlighten yourself you will have to realize you weren't ever real.  That is a paradox.  But reality IS a paradox. That's what you arent seeing here.  You do not yet embrace paradox.  

14 minutes ago, Inliytened1 said:

l

Real is an idea that happens in the self. The self exist, period. Nothing else. Any adjective is a closure 

Edited 5 hours ago by Breakingthewall

[Inliytened1]

3 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

Real is an idea that happens in the self. The self exist, period. Nothing else. Any adjective is a closure 

3 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

Real is an idea that happens in the self

Just open yourself to absolutely everything. After all that is what your own paradigm allows. But yet you don't.  That will be enlightenment for you.  Perhaps I'm wrong but I don't think so.

[AION]

Main teaching of Buddhism is the 5 states of consciousness. Wilber uses it in his waking up model which is not only from waking up from suffering but also waking up in general. It has direct correlation to Wilber´s book of this thread. To truly understand Ralston´s book you have to synthesize it with Wilber. 

[Inliytened1]

1 minute ago, AION said:

Main teaching of Buddhism is the 5 states of consciousness. Wilber uses it in his waking up model which is not only from waking up from suffering but also waking up in general. It has direct correlation to Wilber´s book of this thread. To truly understand Ralston´s book you have to synthesize it with Wilber. 

Too structured. 

[Breakingthewall]

1 hour ago, AION said:

Main teaching of Buddhism is the 5 states of consciousness. Wilber uses it in his waking up model which is not only from waking up from suffering but also waking up in general. It has direct correlation to Wilber´s book of this thread. To truly understand Ralston´s book you have to synthesize it with Wilber. 

The problem with Willber is similar to Ralston's and Buddhism . For him, ultimate reality is formless empty consciousness, and the world of phenomena is an illusory appearance within that consciousness. This description is wrong; it confines you to a dualistic mental boundary that apparently is non-duality.

Ultimate reality is not formless empty consciousness; this is impossible since form exists. Ultimate reality is absolute being, the fact of being, which is no formless or form because it is what all forms are, it's not something separate from the forms. It's affirmative being, the quality of everything. Emptiness or formless are meaningless, just ideas. What is, is. Period. Being is everything, could be empty of form if you meditate but it's just an aspect of being, not different than form. 

"Formless empty consciousness" would be the state of being conscious of absolute being from the human form, which is also absolute being. I don't doubt that Ken Willber can access this state; the problem is that his explanation is flawed, a complete misunderstanding that will close the reader in a maze. 

Edited 4 hours ago by Breakingthewall

[Inliytened1]

4 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

The problem with Willber is similar to Ralston's and Buddhism . For him, ultimate reality is formless empty consciousness, and the world of phenomena is an illusory appearance within that consciousness. This description is wrong; it confines you to a dualistic mental boundary that apparently is non-duality.

Ultimate reality is not formless empty consciousness; this is impossible since form exists. Ultimate reality is absolute being, the fact of being, which is no formless or form because it is what all forms are, it's not something separate from the forms.

"Formless empty consciousness" would be the state of being conscious of absolute being from the human form, which is also absolute being. I don't doubt that Ken Willber can access this state; the problem is that his explanation is flawed, a complete misunderstanding that will close the reader in a maze. 

Where do you get that this is the ultimate reality for them?  I think they see it as One.

[AION]

That is not what Wilber and Ralston says. 😭 Form does exist but the ground is formless. 

[Inliytened1]

Just now, AION said:

That is not what Wilber and Ralston says. 😭 Form does exist but the ground is formless. 

Excellent  

[Inliytened1]

8 minutes ago, AION said:

That is not what Wilber and Ralston says. 😭 Form does exist but the ground is formless. 

The beauty of this is that the groundlesness is form. It must circle back around in an endless paradox to the finite mind.