Maybe Enlightenment Is More Common Than We Think?

[Cathy92506]

I live somewhat of a hermit lifestyle. I practice Zazen every morning for 40 minutes, followed by 40 minutes of Kinhin. During these sessions, I embrace silence and stillness. But this has nothing to do with "awakening" or "enlightenment."

Awakening is just the process of letting go of that emotional baggage that occurs daily. We go through life without being stuck in identifying with those thoughts. We have the thoughts and emotions, but we don't identify with them.

It's that simple. Maybe more of us are enlightened than we realize?

[samijiben]

Nah dude, just the opposite. More people are fools than you think. 

If you ever find an "enlightened person," you better start counting your fingers.

[Puer Aeternus]

7 minutes ago, samijiben said:

Nah dude, just the opposite. More people are fools than you think. 

If you ever find an "enlightened person," you better start counting your fingers.

Honestly don't know why it can't go both ways.

There can be more idiots than we think, but also more spiritual people? 

Most of us know better than scream from the mountaintops about this stuff, it can end up being not very well-received. So how many other silent spiritual hermits out there just chugging through life that you'd never otherwise notice? 

I'm not saying it's a lot, but it may be slightly larger than you'd assume.

Really humans are a large spectrum of differences. You can have tons of idiocracy but also have more than expected spiritual people.. they're just hiding away in the closet! 

[Breakingthewall]

18 minutes ago, Cathy92506 said:

We go through life without being stuck in identifying with those thoughts. We have the thoughts and emotions, but we don't identify with them.

Nonduality says: there is no self, everything is one. You are not the thoughts, you are where the thoughts pass. Let them pass, don't get caught up in them.

Let's see, if there is no self, who can choose to catch up in thoughts or not? If there is no duality, how can thoughts be different from where they occur?

Reality is precisely the other way around: you are the thoughts. When a thought occurs, you are that, just as you are the body flowing in infinite processes and beyond the limits that are perceived, you are the whole, everything that is flowing.

You are the flow of reality taking this form. What happens is that this form is not static or closed, it is dynamic and open, therefore, you as a flow can flow in an expanded way, not a contracted one. You are not a static observer watching the thoughts; that is precisely the appearance of the perceiving subject that occurs in the flow. That's why you perceive that silence has nothing to do with awakening, because it hasn't.

[Cathy92506]

14 minutes ago, Puer Aeternus said:

Honestly don't know why it can't go both ways.

There can be more idiots than we think, but also more spiritual people? 

Most of us know better than scream from the mountaintops about this stuff, it can end up being not very well-received. So how many other silent spiritual hermits out there just chugging through life that you'd never otherwise notice? 

I'm not saying it's a lot, but it may be slightly larger than you'd assume.

Really humans are a large spectrum of differences. You can have tons of idiocracy but also have more than expected spiritual people.. they're just hiding away in the closet! 

"Really humans are a large spectrum of differences. You can have tons of idiocracy but also have more than expected spiritual people.. they're just hiding away in the closet! "

I agree with you! But why use the term "spiritual?" 

[samijiben]

11 minutes ago, Puer Aeternus said:

Honestly don't know why it can't go both ways.

There can be more idiots than we think, but also more spiritual people? 

Most of us know better than scream from the mountaintops about this stuff, it can end up being not very well-received. So how many other silent spiritual hermits out there just chugging through life that you'd never otherwise notice? 

I'm not saying it's a lot, but it may be slightly larger than you'd assume.

Really humans are a large spectrum of differences. You can have tons of idiocracy but also have more than expected spiritual people.. they're just hiding away in the closet! 

I make a distinction between "spiritual people" and one who is actually enlightened, free of himself, operating from a place of openness indefinitely, as breakingthewall CLAIMS he does...

To actually meet such a person in real life is a gift so precious that you wouldn't recognize it. These people may be so hidden that even You wouldn't know it if they were Sucking Your Cock!

I am talking about a modern-day Buddha. 

Have you ever met one before?

If not, then how can you know how many of them exist, if there even are such people "out there?"

How do you know that Leo actually exists, living in his Las Vegas home?

What if you were to obtain his IP address, track him down, bust his door open, and find an ethereal ghost taking a shit with a newspaper in hand and a cigarette in the other?

That is, what if even Leo is a projection of your MIND?

Anyways, this is a divergence from the topic of this post: that is, what if more people are enlightened than you think?

Fucking hogwash!

Find an enlightened person. I dare you. 

You would know how precious and rare such a person really is. 

Even in this day and age. Perhaps especially so. 

It is so goddamn rare to find a person like this. And if you do, they are sure to break every fantasy you have of what such a person must LOOK LIKE!

Good day.

[Puer Aeternus]

I mean I guess there's levels to the game.

"Spiritual people" is a broad category, the deeper you go the fewer you find. 

You'll find the biggest amount splashing around in the kiddie pool. Just getting their feet wet but not really plunging in, ego and all. Basically greenies who are still just dabbling but have adopted a spiritual aesthetic off of some mild experience✨

Then you've got folks taking the process seriously. These are the silently underrated group who are going unnoticed. They're plugged in, learning, burning, and transcending. Different experiences and realizations. 

1 hour ago, Cathy92506 said:

 

Awakening is just the process of letting go of that emotional baggage that occurs daily. We go through life without being stuck in identifying with those thoughts. We have the thoughts and emotions, but we don't identify with them.

It's that simple. Maybe more of us are enlightened than we realize?

I mean, your description doesn't really sound like "enlightenment". Just sounds like this. It's a process, an expansion, but not an end.

What even is enlightenment really? Would an "enlightened" person even refer to themselves as such. Is there every really an end?

So yes, if you want someone like @samijiben says that'll be hard to find. Maybe not even such a thing out there beyond the stories and illusions we have in our minds.

Edited August 16 by Puer Aeternus

[Breakingthewall]

49 minutes ago, samijiben said:

as breakingthewall CLAIMS he does...

CLAIMS that do just sometimes,  but more and more often, and that understand more and more how to do it , and understand more and more how spirituality, mindfullnes, Vipassana, neo advaita and Buddhism are reductive tools to achieve exactly the opposite to openess: closure, control, duality, ego. 

Edited August 16 by Breakingthewall

[Joshe]

“Enlightenment” is just one perceptual configuration of many.

It’s trained into the psyche via what folks round here like to call “this work”. 

When they reach some new state, they think “this must be related to that “enlightenment” concept I’ve been looking into a lot.”

”And folks say there are degrees to it, so there is potential to intensify whatever this thing I’ve discovered is” 

The whole time, thinking there is a linear path or a ladder to be climbed towards a single, absolute mode of perception.

When in truth, the mind has the ability to open many different portals to many different modes of perception. 

Standard enlightenment is groupthink and boxes people into a narrow mode of perception. 

Being able to summon the portals and enter them is meta-enlightenment. Standard enlightenment is just an amalgamation of various positionalities, ideas, practices, and interpretations that eventually crystallize into a new mode of perception. And when perception changes in a big way, they call it enlightenment. 

This is my new theory. You can actually engineer and inhabit many modes of perception, and enlightenment is just one of them. 

First, one must identify and contemplate the portal mechanism, as opposed to blindly doing practices hoping for some vague result. 

Edited August 16 by Joshe

[Cathy92506]

32 minutes ago, Puer Aeternus said:

I mean I guess there's levels to the game.

"Spiritual people" is a broad category, the deeper you go the fewer you find. 

You'll find the biggest amount splashing around in the kiddie pool. Just getting their feet wet but not really plunging in, ego and all. Basically greenies who are still just dabbling but have adopted a spiritual aesthetic off of some mild experience✨

Then you've got folks taking the process seriously. These are the silently underrated group who are going unnoticed. They're plugged in, learning, burning, and transcending. Different experiences and realizations. 

I mean, your description doesn't really sound like "enlightenment". Just sounds like this. It's a process, an expansion, but not an end.

What even is enlightenment really? Would an "enlightened" person even refer to themselves as such. Is there every really an end?

So yes, if you want someone like @samijiben says that'll be hard to find. Maybe not even such a thing out there beyond the stories and illusions we have in our minds.

"I mean, your description doesn't really sound like "enlightenment"." I guess it's just the way I was taught. "Before Enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water. After Enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water." The only difference is after we don't identify with all those emotions. We still have them though. We still have thoughts all day long. Just like the 'Before.' We just don't identify with them after we are done experiencing them. BTW, I think that being "Awakened" is a spiritual fantasy. Rather, it's in the process of being awakened. Because we are all human and we all blunder.

I don't think a person can tell if someone is Enlightened or not. A child goes into a daydream and snaps out of it when the lunch bell rings. That day dream is long forgot. That's why I'm proposing that maybe it's more common than we think.

[Breakingthewall]

There is only one enlightenment: openness to the total. You are the total, the whole, the unlimited that is given its limitlessness. It is everything, and has always been everything. It is absolute openness, and that implies immutability, since it contains all changes.

But at the same time, it flows as a relational flux in ceaseless change reflecting in itself. You can say that change is illusion in the sense that essence never changes because it is everything, but the flux is always flowing, since nothing limits it.

You can be open to the absolute or not, there is not different versions, there are only those two possibilities 

Rumi said: you are not a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in a drop. 

This sentence shows enlightenment 

But you are also a drop in the ocean. There are no limits. 

Edited August 16 by Breakingthewall

[Puer Aeternus]

1 hour ago, Cathy92506 said:

I don't think a person can tell if someone is Enlightened or not. A child goes into a daydream and snaps out of it when the lunch bell rings. That day dream is long forgot. That's why I'm proposing that maybe it's more common than we think.

Ahhh, yeah maybe! 👀 Interesting idea.

I think at the end of the day we're all sorta stumbling around in the dark with different concepts and not even really realizing how different they can be! 

But I definitely agree with your overall read of things 

[Cathy92506]

1 minute ago, Puer Aeternus said:

Ahhh, yeah maybe! 👀 Interesting idea.

I think at the end of the day we're all sorta stumbling around in the dark with different concepts and not even really realizing how different they can be! 

But I definitely agree with your overall read of things 

Thank you. But I'm somewhat confused with some of the responses I'm getting. I'm new to this forum and I don't understand a lot of phrases that are being used. I can't tell if they are agreeing with me or if I'm getting pushback.

[Joshe]

38 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

You can be open to the absolute or not, there is not different versions, there are only those two possibilities 

But why stop there? 

Every time someone hits a new perceptual configuration the first move is to call it the absolute. It feels final when you’re in it so you tell yourself "this is the only enlightenment and everything else is illusion."

But what’s really happening is you’re just describing a crystallized configuration of perception. You call it the total or the unlimited but that’s just the flavor of the mode you landed in. Someone else hits a different crystallization, like pure void, unity, or whatever, and they’ll swear that’s the one true absolute instead.

Enlightenment occurs either via a portal opening all at once or via crystallization of contemplations and training. What you contemplate and what you train determines what your new mode of perception will be.

If you contemplate oneness enough, eventually, those contemplations will crystalize and have an impact on the whole of your being. But so will contemplating and training your golf swing.

I'm just toying around with this idea btw. 

Edited August 16 by Joshe

[Joshe]

9 minutes ago, Cathy92506 said:

Thank you. But I'm somewhat confused with some of the responses I'm getting. I'm new to this forum and I don't understand a lot of phrases that are being used. I can't tell if they are agreeing with me or if I'm getting pushback.

Sorry, didn't mean to derail things. 

I'm not sure exactly what enlightenment or awakening is, but it's been a question on the table for many years. And I've wondered if it's much more simple than what many here believe. 

If I go by your definition, which I'm opened to, then yes, it's not as rare as people make out. But I'm not sure that's all there is to it. 

Edited August 16 by Joshe

[Breakingthewall]

15 minutes ago, Joshe said:

Every time someone hits a new perceptual configuration the first move is to call it the absolute. It feels final when you’re in it so you tell yourself "this is the only enlightenment and everything else is illusion."

Absence of limits is absence of limits, that's everything. Everything else is not an illusion, is limited 

[UnbornTao]

@Cathy92506 Are you Pretty India?

[UnbornTao]

Start by recognizing that we most likely don't know what we're talking about when it comes to enlightenment. It is a direct consciousness into your nature, or into the nature of absolute reality - and that's as far as a definition can go. People often confuse talking about it with having a breakthrough. As a result, it tends to be a rare occurrence, and deep enlightenment is even rarer.

That said, anyone can have a breakthrough. But you shouldn't fill your mind with junk; instead, leave it as a possibility to be personally realized through contemplation. By its very nature, it is seriously not what you think - or can think - it is.

Edited August 16 by UnbornTao

[Sugarcoat]

16 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

@Cathy92506 Are you Pretty India?

You guys need to update your methods lol. Do you think she’s gonna reply like “oh yes I am!!” if she happened to be her

[Sugarcoat]

I assume enlightenment is a kind of end to the sense of self. Or maybe the sense of self is still there in enlightenment just that it’s not seen as “real”, which in our current reality it is: the self is experienced as absolutely real. Maybe that’s the illusion : the self seeming absolutely real. But then in enlightenment it’s seen as just a kind of form, but the non dual nature of reality is recognized, so you see how nothing is actually separate. But all the form remains the same, just not seen as absolutely real and separate
 

That’s my guess 

I have wondered about the self

I think the average person has moments where they forget about themselves : such as when they’re immersed in something.

But it’s not a non dual state, because they’re still immersed in form: in duality (like watching a movie)

For the vast minority of people they’ll have a self all their life, ask someone on the street: do you feel like you exist? They’ll most likely say yes. So enlightenment is really rare

Edited August 16 by Sugarcoat