Meditation is WRONG and Enlightenment is INDOCTRINATION

[PatternsFormThought]

Excuse the extreme headlines, my main purpose there is to bring focus to the main points I'd like to illustrate.

I'm quite suspicious of the activity, believing that most people have have simply been indoctrinated into it including this idea of enlightenment. 

Enlightenment as I can tell, as purely as I can describe it, is simply the absence of a perceived self however people make it much more than this for some reason.

Why should meditation and the absence of thought be the only means of achieving this state?

Why can't a certain kind of way of perceiving and conceiving of the world be a means of achieving this state?

It seems that there's a huge culture in the spiritual community that create unquestionable social norms around both ideas, norms which are antithetical to the idea of not being ruled by ideas which of course, originate from thought.

What I also notice is a strange relationship with the conceptualisation in relation to the idea of absolute truth, negating ideas around absolute truth even though to negate in such a black and white fashion is an absolute truth in itself. Truth seems to be placed in this weird dimension of being purely relative, which again in itself is another absolute truth that is preached even though both coexist. It seems its a duality I notice in the community that people are not aware enough about.

This strange relationship that people have with truth only being relative is also ironic in the case of people having extreme views pertaining to enlightenment such as it can only occur in the absence of not believing in thought and through extensive meditation. How can one get away with creating absolute truths when one believes that truth is relative?

 

 

[Shadowraix]

26 minutes ago, PatternsFormThought said:

Why should meditation and the absence of thought be the only means of achieving this state?

Why can't a certain kind of way of perceiving and conceiving of the world be a means of achieving this state?

Tell us when you discover a better way. People are only sharing what works for them. 

 

[CreamCat]

What you described is spiritual ideology. Become a post-spiritual dude.

[PatternsFormThought]

This chick is enlightened and she does a lot of thinking (an example to help dispel ideas around no thinking and enlightenment).

LISA CAIRNS

Title: Are you perfect just the way you are? | Non duality | Lisa Cairns

She also experiences irrational fears as well that are biologically normal.

She refers to it merely as "the body" as opposed to herself experiencing the fears, desires, etc.

She's also very down to Earth, a good person to listen to.

Doesn't have a questionable fan fare like Mooji or Sadghuru.

Anyone else notice the relationship between fan fares and supposedly male enlightened teachers?

Men are generally more status seeking, this is correlational evidence to be suspicious about claims around enlightenment.

I'm not saying that they're not enlightened or very enlightened, I'm simply saying that its probably false to generate fanciful ideas of what you may think of enlightenment. It seems they're CLEARLY still at the effect of things like testosterone and subsequent status seeking on an unconscious level.

In fact, belief around enlightenment may be the very thing holding some people back from becoming more enlightened.

Moreover what I've noticed is that enlightenment is not absent of beliefs, clearly, without the capacity to have a belief one would not speak so belief is a very important aspect that needs to be looked at in the context of enlightenment. All persons I've encountered so far, at least all those popular persons, clearly have various beliefs.

So there's not only dogma around beliefs about enlightenment but also around belief itself in the context of enlightenment.

I mean at the very least, ALL these people CLEARLY have beliefs about their enlightenment, of which requires thought and beliefs about many things including contrasts to enlightenment (i.e. comparing themselves to other people around them who "aren't enlightened").

Edited June 6, 2019 by PatternsFormThought

[PatternsFormThought]

One of the other strange relationships I notice is people in the spiritual community having this weird relationship with the material world, in fact some form more of an emotional relationship with the spiritual world even though such belief structure is materially bound. 

This is another duality at play and its how peoples beliefs turn into unproductive materialistic outcomes.

Oh and many in the spiritual community have this weird relationship with the word productivity as if to say that productivity, efficiency and organisation is somehow unspiritual. 

Another duality, it goes to possessing misunderstandings about the material plane, without which there would be no practicality and therefore avenue for them to even form beliefs about the material plane.

If this resonates with anyone or if you're triggered my recommendation is to use this as an opportunity to explore and question your belief system.

Belief is the basis for all delusion around this topic here.

Edited June 6, 2019 by PatternsFormThought

[PatternsFormThought]

If anyone wants a good insight on potential enlightenment/enlightening what I recommend is the following combination:

1. On one hand simply practice DISIDENTIFICATION, make a concerted effort with your mind to have a disidentification practice in all your efforts in life.

2. In your contemplations, strive to IDENTIFY correctly through questions and the seeking of better interpretations in relation to the thing you're studying, doing, etc.

That is the most sensible path I can ascertain in relation to enlightenment, everything else is unquestionable dogma and therefore indoctrination. I'm not saying you won't get results from taking on conventional understandings, however many of those results will be delusions combined with positive results. 

This is why there needs to be individual authority, which is the questioning process, of all that you choose to take in.

That's true spirituality to me, everything else is among other things as noted, someone trying to brainwash you into their belief system, whether it be spiral dynamics, the stages of spiral dynamics or otherwise.

All of the stuff that any self help person talks about, all these spiritual teachers, every finding within every religion, every scientific field, every single thing that anyone including myself talks about here and otherwise is just noise to your own path, its not the "truth" regardless as to how much anyone wants to believe it is the case. 

At the end of the day they're just beliefs contradicting the present moment and to the extent that is the case, the extent that said beliefs should probably be questioned, further developed, refined and improved.

 

 

Edited June 6, 2019 by PatternsFormThought

[Shadowraix]

Enlightenment does not imply entire cessation of thought. The cessation of thought in certain practices helps us see through thought and not identify with it. 

Enlightenment does not get rid of the ego, but you can now see past the ego. 

Concepts point to experience but we confuse the concept as the experience. This work is all about finding balance. Be careful about how much you theorize. Even now you are just theorizing what you think you see in these people. 

Entering nonduality does not mean you never use duality and it becomes useless. Rather it becomes a tool. Duality vs nonduality is also a duality. Nonduality will see both perspectives and use either where it applies.

Something only becomes dogma and indoctrination if you hold it as such. 

 

[PatternsFormThought]

Intelligence instructing self control can also be a means of decreasing and or moderating thought. To state that someone must be sitting down, decreasing thought or anything along these lines is merely a belief pertaining to another set of beliefs. Beliefs via non-experimentation (or a lack of thorough experimentation) is merely indoctrination. 

There's nothing wrong with the amount of theorisation, I could do it non-stop. Exactly what is at a loss if it is good theorisation in a good state with more positive than negative outcomes compared to any other activity?

I recommend looking at the dogma you have in relation to theorisation, "be careful" on this topic is another common thread which points to an irrational fear.

Thought is beautiful, one cannot even perceive existence without thought, because it takes the awareness of perception to achieve this which is a thought in itself. 

It all comes down to quality (opposite here: fear), evaluation (opposite here: dogma) and experimentation (opposite here: indoctrination). 

 

[PatternsFormThought]

It's basically pseudo religion in many social circles concerning these spiritual topics as they don't really experiment. They just find out what another person believes and then copy, many do worse and preach.

Edited June 6, 2019 by PatternsFormThought

[PatternsFormThought]

A big thing to help others that I notice is that people aren't aware enough about the negative connotations they form around thought and how those negative connotations arise. 

The more aware they made themselves here the more they'd be able to intelligently re-educate themselves on the process of their thoughts and thinking as opposed to demonising it in some unconscious invalid way without even realising.

Eckhart Tolle for example talks a lot about reducing thought.

BUT instead of looking at him as a spiritual teacher look at him as a human and look at the context of his conclusions.

He was being harmed heavily by his negative thinking. It created delusions about his lack of life success and his subsequent conclusions about the future. He discovered a window of beauty outside the storm of his destructive thinking, a quieter more invisible aspect of himself existed and in lieu of this, reached the conclusion that thought was the cause of much of his suffering. He then abstracted (a thought) and determined that "a lot of thinking" was the cause of much suffering on planet Earth and in doing so, a restriction on peoples capabilities to living well and in peace. 

If Eckhart had of focused more on the technique and methods in the use of thought as opposed to broad generalisations I think he would be doing the subject much more service. This isn't a slight on Eckhart, he is just a brain in a body expressing the limited amidst the infinite, there's no real Eckhart there of course, however it is this identification that people make on people, themselves and others that lead them into group think as opposed to developing more coherent narratives about these subjects.

Edited June 6, 2019 by PatternsFormThought

[PatternsFormThought]

One thing I'm noticing about Lisa Cairns for example (I listed her above - she's interesting to listen to) is her trivialisation and in doing so a kind of demonising of survival (in the video I listed above), now although I think its appropriate to critically think about the nature of our existence and why we continue to exist there is little utility in generating negative/related conclusions about those that seem to be reasons.

She's getting people to think about their existence, I think that's great, but it seems like she's leap frogging to "survival doesn't matter".

How would she know?

She wouldn't.

This is just a fun play she's having in this moment with beliefs and Leo does the same thing. 

There's nothing wrong with it per se, its amusing, but I'm not sure they're really aware of what they're doing as much as they think they are or of which they need to be in order to speak sensibly about the subject.

Many people in self help are often irrational like this without realising. Its not their fault of course, its just a happening in real time, but its important for us to be aware of so we can avoid doing it.

Its not a survival game that's being played, it's a belief game that's being played, that's all. 

Edited June 6, 2019 by PatternsFormThought

[Leo Gura]

@PatternsFormThought The way you frame this whole topic is trolling and demonstrates a lack of nuance.

If you want to discuss things feel free to start specific threads, but just ranting against meditation or enlightenment without acknowledging the vast diversity of legit spiritual paths is just spreading your own ignorance.

Nuance! Naunce! Nuance!

All of this is much more complicated than you currently understand.

Be here to learn, not to rant.