I Don't Get Any Replies

[Aditi]

I have started my path towards enlightenment...  seeing Leo's video on enlightenment, I have asked questions to myself and at some point, I'm unable to get any more replies. Looks like my mind itself is expecting some answer from me :). By sitting still, my body gets numb until I become tired and fall asleep. Should I continue asking questions? Or, I don't really understand what's happening, is my mind tricking me?

[Aditi]

@Leo Gura

[Prabhaker]

10 minutes ago, Aditi said:

I have asked questions to myself and at some point, I'm unable to get any more replies.

All answers supplied by the mind will be false. Most probably the answer will come from your tradition, from your scriptures, from your conditioning. If you want to go rightly into the method, then the question has not to be verbally asked. Because as long as it remains a verbal question, you will supply a verbal answer from the head.

You have to drop the verbal question. It has to remain just a vague idea, just like a thirst. Not that “I am thirsty,”—can you see the difference? When you are thirsty, you feel the thirst. And if you are in a desert, you feel the thirst in every fiber of your body. You don’t say, “I am thirsty, I am thirsty.” It is no longer a linguistic question, it is existential.

if you are not asking it in language but instead the feeling of the question is settling inside your center, then there is no need for any answer. Then it is none of the mind’s business. The mind will not hear that which is non-verbal, and the mind will not answer that which is non-verbal.

You will not get the answer. You will get the feel, you will get the taste, you will get the smell. As you go deeper, you will be filled more with the feeling of being, of immortality, blissfulness, silence… a tremendous benediction.

But there is no answer like, “I am this, I am that.” All that is from the scriptures. Answer will be existential. Great patience is necessary. 

[Little Plant]

@Aditi Have you seen all Leo's enlightenment videos? 

It's the emptiness between the thoughts, the answer you don't get from your thoughts that is you. 

[Nahm]

1 hour ago, Aditi said:

I have started my path towards enlightenment...  seeing Leo's video on enlightenment, I have asked questions to myself and at some point, I'm unable to get any more replies. Looks like my mind itself is expecting some answer from me :). By sitting still, my body gets numb until I become tired and fall asleep. Should I continue asking questions? Or, I don't really understand what's happening, is my mind tricking me?

Just keep up the daily practices and keep letting go deeper. It could be years between 'replies', but in my experience, if you keep letting go, you keep getting insights. Eventually, nonthinking being is an insight in itself, because it satisfies that itch for insights, as it is non-insight so to speak. After many years, insights / replies come to you as pure sensations, with no content. The last one I had left me somewhere between laughing and crying at every person I see because I experience they are all God. Also, milk was a bad choice.

[Telepresent]

I like the perspective Jed McKenna has on this: he makes a point that rather than focussing on an answer, you should focus on the question.  Enough time spent with any question, you eventually dissolve it and realise that the question was never really there to begin with.  Meaning that the premises were wrong.  That's the thing with questions: they're built upon layers and layers and layers of premises, which we have to accept and believe as true and correct and inviolable before we can ask the question.

An extreme example: violence.  We ask how a loving god/universe can allow violence and suffering.  There's a pile of assumptions there: that god/the universe is loving (or loving in the way we think we understand it), that violence and suffering are bad, that suffering exists outside of our emotional perspective, and so on.

The problem with trying to answer questions is that you have to make models.  You have to model and assume and extrapolate and guess and none of these things are ever quite right.  But if you investigate premises...

Think of it this way.  You are dealing with an incredibly complex mathematical formula.  You just can't seem to resolve it.  And at the very base of it, where you don't even bother to check, because you know such simple calculations are correct, is 2+2=5.

Until you see that, every question you have about the more complex parts of the formula are completely invalid, because they are based on a false premise.

Dig.

Edited March 3, 2017 by Telepresent

[Telepresent]

@Aditi  Also: as you mention sitting still, I'm assuming you're meditating.  Are you doing anything else?  What do you expect from meditation?  (That's not a judgement question - it's pure: what do you think/hope will happen by meditating?   We start from the basics)

[Nahm]

@Telepresent I really enjoyed that. Thanks. Would you also say this is similar to how our own resistant thinking is the thing to release, rather than to pursue the illusion of product of it? 

[Telepresent]

@Nahm Absolutely.  Our resistance is much more restrictive than we think. 

For example, we can play a thought experiment, where I say that reality is a bit like the Matrix, some kind of virtual reality environment, blah blah blah, and so long as I keep that as a descriptive tool, that's fine.

And now I say, NO, LISTEN, I AM TELLING YOU THAT YOUR REALITY IS FALSE.  THAT EVERYTHING YOU BELIEVE IN IS A LIE.  THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE DON'T EXIST, THE THINGS YOU DESIRE ARE IMAGINARY, YOU WILL NEVER EVER BE CONTENT BY CHASING HAPPINESS, AND YOU - THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL THING YOU BELIEVE YOURSELF TO BE - IS A TRICK OF PERSPECTIVE...

It's not quite so fine, is it?

Why not?  Emotion.  If you honestly look at that statement, and you honestly respond to it, I expect you will have an extremely resistant reaction to it.

Because it's obviously bullshit, isn't it?  It's obviously bullshit.  The world exists, you exist, I exist, you exist as some sort of *whatever* inside the head, and we need to focus on worrying about the practicality of out lives.

OBVIOUSLY.

You know how people say "you're already enlightened"?  And how fucking annoying that is?

It's because, in a sense, you are.  This is it and it is this and whatever you are experiencing in it is correct.  But if it demands you dig...

You need to question all of those statements.  Do you exist?  Does the world exist?  If you do, and you're inside the head, where?  As thought?  Ok, so what is thought?  As emotion?  Ok, so what is emotion?  Dig Dig Dig.

And the most important, the MOST important question is what you highlight: resistant thinking.  What is it?  What is it doing?  Why is it doing it? 

If you dissolve all that is false, then only truth can remain.  So there's no real point in pursuing truth: the better thing is to eliminate the false.  Remember Sherlock Holmes: once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains - however improbable - must be the truth.

Leap into your resistance.  Work out what it is, why it is there, what it is protecting, and don't let it pull you off-task until you know what the fuck is going on.

Good luck

[Nahm]

That's awesome stuff.  I really agree with your Holmes quote too. Thanks. That all makes me wonder, what next? If I was enlightened, and I achieved my list, and am living my purpose, what would my perspective on all that be?

[Aditi]

@Nahm, @Prabhaker, @BobbyEmily, @Telepresent Thank you all for sharing your insights. I will definitely try to differentiate my mind's voice and the true self. I could understand that I have not even progressed 0.1%! . Let me keep trying my best.

[Neo]

9 hours ago, BobbyEmily said:

@Aditi Have you seen all Leo's enlightenment videos? 

It's the emptiness between the thoughts, the answer you don't get from your thoughts that is you. 

 

Would you say it's like our thoughts are the musical notes on a sheet of music, and the space between the notes is you, but that space spreads out around the notes and off into infinity? Many people associate themselves with the notes instead of being the awareness of the song.

Edited March 3, 2017 by Neo

[Leo Gura]

12 hours ago, Aditi said:

I have asked questions to myself and at some point, I'm unable to get any more replies.

When you've hit the wall, you sit there keep pushing for the breakthrough. It's not easy.

You may have to spend 1000 hours without any answers. And still keep going.

One practical thing you might do is: spend larger blocks of time inquiring. If you're doing, say, 60 minutes per day, that's not enough. You may need to do 100 hours straight to build up the necessary momentum. Your daily 60 min practice is really just for maintenance. The real work happens when you do LOOOOOONG sits. The mind needs dozens of hours to get into the groove of really deep inquiry.

Go do a meditation retreat to build up some experience in serious focusing.

This is not easy stuff! The Buddah is said to have sat under a tree and inquired for 7 to 40 days without moving to achieve his enlightenment. That's probably not far from the truth.

You must slowly build your mind and body up for serious sitting. Be strategic about it.

[Neo]

19 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

The real work happens when you do LOOOOOONG sits. The mind needs dozens of hours to get into the groove of really deep inquiry.

This practical information is very useful, however, while I'm not enlightened, you would not believe the amazing progress I made, and I am the world WORST meditator. Tired. Bored. Falls Asleep. Never enough time to do it. But I've felt all the chakras flowing their energy (and I didn't even believe in this or read about it) and I asked who am I for a good 20 minutes until completely nauseated, and then my words started coming out in some alien language. And then some other stuff like in contemplation where every thing in the room comes into focus at once. Stuff like this happens, and I tell you it's true that I must be the worst meditator currently on the planet.

[Nahm]

@Neo Perhpas you have good mental habits of not accumulating resistant thoughts, making meditation easier?   Even more so then, do what Leo said. You stand to get a lot out of it. Post the alien words, maybe someone can translate it for you.  Or tell them "stop talking like that, you know I don't speak Spanish!"

[Telepresent]

18 hours ago, Nahm said:

That all makes me wonder, what next? If I was enlightened, and I achieved my list, and am living my purpose, what would my perspective on all that be?

That's the big 'what if?', isn't it?  Although I have to say I'm a little wary of questions like that: I see a lot of people asking questions about what it's like to be enlightened, in lieu of actually going and finding out for themselves.  If it's a light little wondering, that's fine, but if it's a distraction from actually sitting down and doing the work... maybe not

[PureExp]

@Aditi Listening is an art. Perhaps this will help: The Art of Introspection - my views on what what do to and what not to do. This is the ABC.