Peter Ralston worldview

[Natasha Tori Maru]

35 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

I didn't read his books. Maybe I will try but I'm too ADHD for reading books, or maybe I just find them boring. What I understand of his idiosyncrasy is that, according to him, the mental is illusion and the real is direct experience: tastes, smells, what you can see and touch.

But the mental is also your direct experience, even if it's not sensory; it's a real perception. You're not imagining it; your system creates the mental from perceived models just as it creates the sensory. It's not ontologically different. It's just another level of perception, less rigid but as real as the senses. 

I think some of Ralston's terms can be confusing. And our mind can make things VERY real. I am not contesting anything like that.

What Ralston points to with his teachings on suffering are leaning into dissolving conditioning and healing. He would never term it as such, because he almost dies when someone frames his methods us such. He does not want to put any sort of 'aim' or 'outcome' in his students minds.

All of us are working on our conditionings and dissolving them into ourselves as part of spiritual process. Wake up, clean up, grow up. This is the process of integrating Truth after realisation. After mystical experience. This is what his teaching about suffering is aiming toward, because when we see we cause some unnessecary suffering in our experience it is actually healing at the same time. Healing scars 'samskara' from the past. Remuneration. Memories etched into our primitive mind.

The problem is 'stop doing it' isn't a method many can use. So I think much of some users dislike of Ralston is his brutal teaching methods that just aren't going to land for the typical person. Being yelled at to 'stop doing it, you are doing it' confuses many, and makes them feel like they are responsible for their suffering. 

We aren't responsible for our suffering from trauma in that, it is embedded in the animal 'brainstem' feeling part of the brain. It acts as a reflex. But it is possible to heal from this. After all, this is what therapy aims for. Self help. Dissolving conditioning. 

All of us must take responsibility for our healing. We cannot walk through life hurting those around us and claiming 'I have trauma, soz' 

I can see exactly why being told to 'stop doing it' is not going to work for most. It just so happens, it worked for me. It led to the realisation I was performing unnessecary suffering in my experience.

Edited 9 hours ago by Natasha Tori Maru

[theleelajoker]

I'm not a Ralston expert and only superficially know his work. But one thing that stands out and that I like about his POV: he puts power into our own hands."stop doing that, you're creating it" --> if you only start to think like that little bit, it's empowering. 

[Breakingthewall]

7 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

The problem is 'stop doing it' isn't a method many can use. So I think much of some users dislike of Ralston is his brutal teaching methods that just aren't going to land for the typical person. Being yelled at to 'stop doing it, you are doing it' confuses many, and makes them feel like they are responsible for their suffering

It could works, same than Tolle s ideas. 

What I meant is that what I get from watching his videos is that he establishes an essential difference between the sensory and the mental, categorizing the sensory as real and the mental as false. In my opinion, this isn't the case.

It's like when Tolle says, "It's always now." Is something bad happening to you now? Then why are you suffering? What's happening now is that you're suffering. Not because of something in the past, but because of a created mental structure, a neural pathway, a stable quantum cloud that is a universe in itself that is happening.

This structure takes the form of the "past" because the mind functions by creating a timeline. This isn't false or illusory; it's a natural force that creates civilizations by synchronizing millions of individuals as one, creating art, culture, science, philosophy.

I completely agree that it's essential to break free from the chains of the mind, but that's not achieved by categorizing them as illusory. It's confusing, traps you. Or at least that's the case for me.

The only way for me is the The direct, non-conceptual understanding of the energetic mechanisms that close off, that trap you in the vibration we call mental suffering, perceiving them directly and confronting them without evasion, and without categorizing them as "illusion." If you categorize them that way, you are within the mind level that assigns categories and meaning. If you see them directly, you are a step above, at the level of direct structural understanding. At that level, everything is the same category: real. It is living reality flowing in its forms, and suffering is living reality. It is at this level that suffering is deactivated because here it is not "suffering", it is the flow of the real, like everything else. Maybe Ralston is pointing in the same direction? I guess so, but I never understood that listening him. 

Edited 1 hour ago by Breakingthewall

[Breakingthewall]

@Natasha Tori Maru  the mistake that i see in Ralston is ontological, not something banal, but of course this is my opinion and probably you would think that who's wrong is me. 

Look: For Ralston, mental flow is illusory because what ultimately is, is direct awareness of mental flow. For me, mental flow is what it is in the form of mental flow, and what I am is what it is in the form of a dual perceiver.

Perception is not the foundation but the expression of what is in a concrete structure. For Ralston, perception itself is the foundation. Consequences? If you follow Ralston's line of thought to the end, you arrive at solipsism and absolute closure. If you follow the line I propose, you disintegrate as a center and arrive at absolute openness

If you place perception or consciousness as the foundation, you place yourself, the perceiver, as the absolute center. This is neo-Advaita spirituality, and the problem with it is that, while calling itself non-duality, it establishes an essential duality: the real, consciousness; the illusory, that which appears.

In my view, you can jump from the dense emotional level to the perceptual level where everything is perceived as flow, but the only thing that changes here is your subjective experience, not the ontological category of your experience. Ontologically, everything is what it is. Subjectively, one type of perception is free, the other trapped. Both are the reality.