Why would anyone want enlightenment?

[tsuki]

@11modal11 @Mikael89 There are people that need to feel like the life is a struggle in order to feel accomplished.
To them, happiness has to be deserved and earned the hard way. By practicing, discipline and hard work.
The fact is that you can be happy regardless of your circumstances, and it is a valuable skill that outshines any practice in existence.
It is the greatest practice and the hardest work. To dedicate your life to be happy, no matter what. That is the path of totality.

In a sense - hard work that betters your circumstances is the easy option to those people. They simply cannot fathom the idea that they can do nothing and still be content. They call it laziness, half-assing life and other names. Don't let those names stick with you. Or do let them, but understand that unless you do the hard work, your circumstances will not improve and may even deteriorate.
That is the opportunity to practice your happiness on a new level, or grind yourself to improve.

@MarkusSweden can you relate to @11modal11's story?

@Mikael89 If love Kahn talks about is truly infinite, then it is nothing other than nothingness.
Everything speaks enlightenment if you know how to listen.

Edited July 20, 2018 by tsuki

[tsuki]

59 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

Western psychology’s aim is to fortify the individual’s ego so that he may become less neurotic, slightly happier and ultimately function ‘better’ in society. In the East, the goal is instead to dissolve the ego rather than strengthen it. 

Westerners cannot slap Eastern spirituality on top of a western ego and expect enlightenment. ~Carl Jung

If you want to become successful in a western society or materialistic society, eastern spirituality is not for you. We should not forget Rudyard Kipling, what he said has significance.

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet

@Prabhaker I follow Jung's teachings, but I think that he was wrong in this respect.
Having a strong ego and detaching from it is definitely possible.
These are two disjoint dimensions of existence. They do not intersect and conflict. It is a false duality.
It is done exactly through slapping Eastern spirituality on top of a western ego.
The key is to slap it not on top, but besides the western ego.
Can you relate, @Joseph Maynor? I think that you follow a similar path to me.

[11modal11]

@tsuki haha it’s so funny you say it that way, in my life hard work was always the thing that I avoided because I felt so amazing I didn’t want to stop the party. Only recently have I discovered that you can enjoy work like a video game and see how amazing it is when small little touches on a keyboard make things appear that you like or can build an entire digital infrastructure  or how you can start from a zero point realize now and then watch the slow incremental changes as your life and the world around you morphs lmao. 

[11modal11]

25 minutes ago, tsuki said:

@Prabhaker I follow Jung's teachings, but I think that he was wrong in this respect.
Having a strong ego and detaching from it is definitely possible.
These are two disjoint dimensions of existence. They do not intersect and conflict. It is a false duality.
It is done exactly through slapping Eastern spirituality on top of a western ego.
The key is to slap it not on top, but besides the western ego.
Can you relate, @Joseph Maynor? I think that you follow a similar path to me.

Also with this said the answer is definitely yes, one of my favorite hobbies is to intentionally create different egos. When I was a kid I used to be a Magician or a rockstar or something and I’d act like it, to this day I still do it. Depending on when you met me I could seem like a Charlie sheen type, a five year old, or even a Jordan Belford megalomaniac ahaha.

Edited July 20, 2018 by 11modal11

[11modal11]

And you could say that it doesn’t count but I have consistent ones I utilize so often that may as well be “real egos”

[Zweistein]

On 15.7.2018 at 11:38 PM, Stretch said:

Pros

• You know the truth
• You suffer no more
• You’re free (from the game of life)

Cons

• You give up your life
  • (both in terms of actually dying, and of giving up attachment to all the content of your life. Leo has rightly emphasised this total annihilation)
• Existence becomes totally, 100% meaningless and empty
  • (strictly speaking, life is meaningless and empty anyway, at least from the perspective of truth, but from the worldly perspective we might currently operate from, life is rich, complex and meaningful)

So, enlightenment amounts basically to whether you want to end your life, either because you’re tired of the pain of living in the world, or because you just have to know the truth, at all costs (and I mean ALL costs - it will cost you everything). Of course, if you’re after happiness, mystical states, feelings of peace, love, joy, or contentment, then seeking enlightenment is a misguided effort. You can’t hold onto any of this if you’re going for enlightenment. You won’t gain anything. Your life will not improve, it will end. You will no longer be here on the material plane.

I think it’s particularly worth posting this question in this forum, because if any of you, like me, became excited about the idea of enlightenment within Leo’s original context of ‘creating an amazing life’, you may also find yourself realising that the two are not compatible. Enlightenment won’t give you an amazing life, it will extinguish your life.

I'm not criticising Leo here, he's said a lot of this himself. But I wonder if there are others among you who, like me, were drawn to spirituality, self-actualisation and actualized.org because we wanted a happy life, but have found ourselves instead moving towards death.

What do you guys think about all this?

In my humble opinion, we gain that life becomes magical again - every freaking minute of it! 

[OBEler]

 

This is very hard to digest for the ego, who search enlightenment.

He says there is no god, no director of anything. Life is total meaningless, it just is. You  never will experience enlightenment, because there is no one who experiences anything. There is no free will, even no NOW. This all is not happening. There is just aliveness but again no one experience this aliveness

Edit: I think this old man is a typical NEO-ADVAITA.  He misinterprets some aspects of the truth too radical. He say some things about reality, he says these thoughts he has come directly from nothingness, but I think these thought of nothingness are not deep enough.

Edited July 22, 2018 by OBEler