Bliss Is Not A (Specific) Feeling

[Wilhelm44]

Just now, Mellowmarsh said:

Speculation is not this natural immediacy. Speculation dams up the spontaneous flow. 

Gentle zen slap to the face, thank you🙂🌠

[Mellowmarsh]

16 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

Gentle zen slap to the face, thank you🙂🌠

😂.. you’re such fun to interact with, so naturally easy. Just the way I like it.

[Wilhelm44]

14 minutes ago, Mellowmarsh said:

😂.. you’re such fun to interact with, so naturally easy. Just the way I like it.

I feel the same 

[Hyperion]

3 hours ago, Wilhelm44 said:

I'm beginning to sense there is a bliss to that peace 

Do you ever feel like you are literally being consumed by silence... like there's an invisible black hole that just perpetually sucks you in and swallows you up?

That sensation seems very prominent for me these days.

 

Edited 7 hours ago by Hyperion

[Wilhelm44]

12 minutes ago, Hyperion said:

Do you ever feel like you are literally being consumed by silence... like there's an invisible black hole that just perpetually sucks you in and swallows you up?

That sensation seems very prominent for me these days.

 

I have glimpses of that. Im also experiencing this sense that the mind is melting. Like the mind is realizing that it knows nothing. And Im noticing that the immediacy of whats always already here is literally just receiving everything with love.

[Wilhelm44]

@Hyperion  Im curious, did you follow a specific path like Vedanta for example ?

[kavaris]

Oh you know i followed vadanta...and hairy krishna... If you name that sht, i followed that shr.... I followed honey bear and coyote ugly. Sinbad... Name it.

[Hyperion]

25 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

I have glimpses of that. Im also experiencing this sense that the mind is melting. Like the mind is realizing that it knows nothing. And Im noticing that the immediacy of whats always already here is literally just receiving everything with love.

Nice. 😌

23 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

@Hyperion  Im curious, did you follow a specific path like Vedanta for example ?

Not really... been reading books and listening to talks by people of all stripes and colors over the years. Went to one live satsang by a former Osho sannyasin couple of years ago --- which left me rather unimpressed, lol.

I've never really had the impetus to follow one specific teacher or tradition. Having said that, the systems/traditions that I probably resonate with the most are Taoism, Buddhism and Shaivism. What I like about (correctly understood and applied) Buddhism is its emphasis of shunyata (I.e. the recognition that there is no concrete ultimate nature or essence of reality); what I love about Taoism and Shaivism is that they both honor and acknowledge the divine role of form & energy and recognize all (seeming) opposites such as spirit/matter, permanence/impermanence, form/formlessness, oneness/multiplicity etc. as equally valid sides of the same coin (which frankly makes much more sense to me than Advaita philosophy, which is inherently self-contradictory imo).

But honestly, there is truth and beauty to be found in all spiritual traditions... even though you may sometimes need to dig and drill your way through entire mountain ranges of superstitious & dogmatic BS (= belief systems) in order to unearth it. 

[Wilhelm44]

35 minutes ago, Hyperion said:

Advaita philosophy, which is inherently self-contradictory imo

Thanks, I'm curious, can you say a bit more about this ?

[kavaris]

There all gonna be contradicting eventually, just a matter of time and patience. And theres no problem w/ that. Like i think things can live calmly as just sorta, floatin... "undecided"... unrevealed not-yet-revealed. Contradicting... I can attest to living a majority of my life in a borderline funk of contradiction, tryina steer a sinking ship like "AAAaannnd, Here WE GO, Guys. Time to float this motha effer, like..."

[Hyperion]

1 hour ago, Wilhelm44 said:

Thanks, I'm curious, can you say a bit more about this ?

Well, I admittedly am no PhD scholar of comparative religion,  so you might want to take the following reflexions with a slight grain of salt... but the way I understand it, the big difference between Advaita Vedanta and (Kashmir) Shaivism is that classic Advaita in the vein of Adi Shankara regards the world of form & change as illusory and unreal and postulates that there is a formless and unchanging essence of reality which is sort of hidden behind a "veil of illusion" and which alone is ultimately real. So the glaring irony of this philosophy is that while Advaita literally means "not two", it splits up reality into "real" and "unreal", "illusory" and "not illusory", "essence" and "appearance" etc. and thereby creates exactly the kind of duality that it nominally denies. Shaivism on the other hand acknowledges and honors the duality of Shiva-Shakti (i.e. spirit/matter, consciousness/energy, permanence/impermanence) and sees them as two equally valid sides of the same coin, as I said earlier.

Now, the delicious irony on my part is that my signature, which you can see below - The World Is Illusion, Only Brahman Is Real, The World Is Brahman - is a famous Advaita slogan that is widely attributed to either Adi Shankara or Ramana Maharshi, who are arguably the two most revered and well-know proponents of Advaita philosophy in all of history. So why, in spite of everything I just said, do I love it so much that I decided to make it my signature of choice? Well, I love it precisely because it spells out the inherent contradiction at the heart of this philosophy in such a clear and palpable way that the contradiction turns into paradox. It basically says "it's all an illusion, and it's also real, and it's all one, and it's also two, and it's all the same, and it's also different".

So I guess you could say that the saving grace of Advaita philosophy is that it basically negates and annihilates itself, once you take it to its proper conclusion. And if that's what being a "radical nondualist" is about, then by all means... non-dualize away. 

[Wilhelm44]

14 minutes ago, Hyperion said:

And if that's what being a "radical nondualist" is about, then by all means... non-dualize away.

Thanks, I'm not a fanatic 

So if I simply said that what I see before me right now is simultaneously real and unreal, would we agree ?

[Hyperion]

4 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

Thanks, I'm not a fanatic 

I am relieved. 

5 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

So if I simply said that what I see before me right now is simultaneously real and unreal, would we agree ?

Well, that depends on what you mean by "real".

When I speak of "reality", I am referring to that which has no opposite because it is all that there is (and could be). So to me it doesn't make any sense to speak of something which is "unreal", because unreality would be that which is not. And the characteristic feature of that which is not is that, well, it just isn't there, duh.

I mean, if you want to say that what you see before you right now is in fact not there (in which case I wonder how you are able to see it), then be my guest... just don't complain when manifest reality violently hits you over the head in order to prove to you just how real it is, lol.

[Wilhelm44]

8 minutes ago, Hyperion said:

When I speak of "reality", I am referring to that which has no opposite because it is all that there is (and could be).

Agreed.

13 minutes ago, Hyperion said:

just don't complain when manifest reality violently hits you over the head in order to prove to you just how real it is

I don't think anyone is advocating stepping in front of a bus. 

(I think this might be many people's misunderstanding with regards to radical nonduality. It is somehow viewed as being in denial of life. And yet it actually leads to a more intense experience of life. The no self thing is just a doorway in my opinion. Less filters, less resistance etc.)

You could also be violently hit over the head during a dream (virtual reality) at night, and when you wake up and realize it was just a dream it's as if it never actually happened.

Similarly, from the perspective of "that which has no opposite because it is all that there is" nothing has happened.

[Hyperion]

1 minute ago, Wilhelm44 said:

You could also be violently hit over the head during a dream (virtual reality) at night, and when you wake up and realize it was just a dream it's as if it never actually happened.

The key word(s) here being "as if".

See, many people (seem to) think that they have somehow stumbled upon the "true nature of reality" when they switch from the experience of time to the experience of timelessness and then run around saying things like "nothing has actually ever happened", as if it were absolutely true. But as I always like to point out, the experience of timelessness can only exist in relation and contrast to the experience of time, making "nothing has ever happened" a relatively (un)true statement. In fact, anything that can be expressed with words can only ever be relatively true, not absolutely true.

[Wilhelm44]

14 minutes ago, Hyperion said:

In fact, anything that can be expressed with words can only ever be relatively true, not absolutely true.

Absolutely 

[Wilhelm44]

@Hyperion

Have you not experienced a dreamlike quality to this reality ?

That's all I meant by simultaneously real and unreal.

Doesn't mean a bus won't knock you over if you get hit by one. (I haven't met anyone yet who believed otherwise.)

 

Edited 1 hour ago by Wilhelm44

[Mellowmarsh]

29 minutes ago, Hyperion said:

But as I always like to point out, the experience of timelessness can only exist in relation and contrast to the experience of time, making "nothing has ever happened" a relatively (un)true statement. In fact, anything that can be expressed with words can only ever be relatively true, not absolutely true.

Relative truths are those that change. So the claim that “nothing has ever happened”just means happenings never stay the same forever as fixed unchanging events. That’s what’s meant by “nothing has ever happened” because what does apparently happen today will disappear to the yesterday and will no longer exit, ever again. So is there anything at all that you can think of that never changes, that never appears or disappears? 

[Hyperion]

16 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

Have you not experienced a dreamlike quality to this reality?

Of course. And together with this experience, there is the knowledge / realization that I can only experience "dreamlike" because I can also experience "not dreamlike".

So if you ask me if in this very moment my experience of reality is dreamlike or not dreamlike, my answer is: YES. 

22 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

That's all I meant by simultaneously real and unreal.

...which is why I said: "That depends on what you mean by real."

24 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

Doesn't mean a bus won't knock you over if you get hit by one. (I haven't met anyone yet who believed otherwise.)

Umm, are we posting on the same forum? 

[Hyperion]

5 minutes ago, Mellowmarsh said:

Relative truths are those that change. So the claim that “nothing has ever happened”just means happenings never stay the same forever as fixed unchanging events. 

Then why not say "happenings never stay the same forever as fixed unchanging events" instead of "nothing has ever happened”?

7 minutes ago, Mellowmarsh said:

So is there anything at all that you can think of that never changes, that never appears or disappears? 

I could say "reality", but for any statement that you make about reality therevis an opposite statement which is equally relatively (un)true.

[Insert gif of turtle on rotating vinyl record]