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Post by mamza on Jun 24, 2011 11:53:50 GMT -5
Well, if you're referring to RT, I would say that what you gain is the knowledge of no-self, not the realization of it. I agree with Max. There are a lot of people there who come with sufficient intellectual understanding (knowledge) and are pushed towards dropping that knowledge and towards realizing in some other way than just intellectual. Here's a question that I think is related to the topic. It seems that we think of "doership" and "sense of self" in two different ways. 1) As a conginitive belief structure that eventually results in the actual experience of patterns that manifest as "feel like a self" and "feel like a doer". 2) As a feeling of sense of self and doer (that is a simple biological process of coordinating the organism) which the cognitive belief attaches to, appropriates and piggybacks on to produce the illusion that an actual self exists (and not just processes with a clear biological function). If 1) is true, then the collapse of the cognitive pattern necessitates the collapse of doership and selfhood. If 2) is true then even after the collapse of a cognitive belief, sense of doership and sense of self still may exist (although they don't belng to anyone). I don't know how the relation is between cognitive belief and visceral experience of doership and selfhood actually. But I think that the relation between these two should inform our strategy about how to see through them. To be honest, I think you're a lot smarter than me about this stuff. I'm not so hot at deciphering, but let me see if I got you straight: You're saying that either the cognitive feeling of self (intellectual), or the biological (automatic, involuntary) sense of self are what's going on. #2 seems a lot closer to the money. That's pretty much what Enigma was just saying, I think. There is a feeling of doership present because you are supposedly the stuff happening, but it isn't personal. I don't know about the relationship between the two either, but in my experience I'll just find something else to see through once I finish seeing through those.
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Post by heretic on Jun 24, 2011 11:57:34 GMT -5
Max, there's a pretty substantial difference between seeing that there is no self and having it actually fall away. I can see it in a split second, but it hasn't fallen away. Focusing on anything can slap you right into that no you mode, but it's just a mode. It's a thing that enters and exits over a course of time, which is then claimed by a self later on. There's some sort of a difference being imagined where no self becomes 'right' or 'real' and self becomes 'wrong' or 'unreal.' As far as it being underwhelming, I think I disagree. There's a lot more going on, actually...it's just one thing when it does it. Things are far more alive and active--the whole world becomes completely interactive and spontaneous. It's definitely not life-rocking at this point, but the reason I see what I have as knowledge rather than realization is because I constantly come back here to try and reason this stuff out and get advice. If I truly realized that there wasn't a self, I don't think I would feel it necessary to try and do that. A realization doesn't leave even a shadow of a doubt, and I have plenty of that. mamza I went and dug this out of another website's archive. It seems to be relevant, because you're essentially saying the same thing. "To attain enlightenment we need both direct experience and understanding. But it is important that the experience comes first and the explanation or the knowledge comes afterward. If one accumulates too much intellectual knowledge beforehand, it will skew or bias the innocence of the natural experience of the self. After the experience of Being it is important to stabilize that experience with spiritual understanding that resonates with you. It can be from any wisdom tradition as long as it speaks to the details of your personal experience. Matching the experiences of past spiritual travelers’ experiences to your own experience validates and stabilizes your experiences. This is how it then becomes a functional reality in your everyday life. Spiritual knowledge that isn’t tied directly to one’s immediate experience remains merely theoretical and doesn’t transform life. When someone becomes enlightened has more to do with the limitations in the depth of their experience, not their knowledge. Enlightenment is seeing what is already there, but to discover what is already there one needs to clean the windows of perception. If the mind and body are refined enough to maintain awareness of pure consciousness at all times, then the knowledge that establishes enlightenment will not be far away. " I love you, man. You have passion!
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Post by Deleted on Jun 24, 2011 13:00:40 GMT -5
Max, there's a pretty substantial difference between seeing that there is no self and having it actually fall away. I can see it in a split second, but it hasn't fallen away. yes, that's me too! murky waters. that's why i'm here and not there....drumroll...but looking at anytime, i'm nowhere. <outoftune horn sound> i come back here for a kick in the pants too. but doubts are just part of the atmosphere. sometimes i wonder if it's just a temperament thing, hardwired. Some folks have less of it than others -- E.G. they can be completely wrong about something and have no doubts whatsoever. While others can absolutely clear and accurate and also be trembling with doubt. Folks that traipse around "I'm enlightened" are also the folks who just recently were traipsing around claiming that it was 100% hogwash.
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Post by heretic on Jun 24, 2011 13:47:12 GMT -5
Hell, I'm not enlightened. And I suspect that, even if I was, I wouldn't be a finished product. It's just the beginning of whatever happens, or doesn't happen next.
The whole darn thing is just plain fun!
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Post by question on Jun 24, 2011 13:48:06 GMT -5
I agree with Max. There are a lot of people there who come with sufficient intellectual understanding (knowledge) and are pushed towards dropping that knowledge and towards realizing in some other way than just intellectual. Here's a question that I think is related to the topic. It seems that we think of "doership" and "sense of self" in two different ways. 1) As a conginitive belief structure that eventually results in the actual experience of patterns that manifest as "feel like a self" and "feel like a doer". 2) As a feeling of sense of self and doer (that is a simple biological process of coordinating the organism) which the cognitive belief attaches to, appropriates and piggybacks on to produce the illusion that an actual self exists (and not just processes with a clear biological function). If 1) is true, then the collapse of the cognitive pattern necessitates the collapse of doership and selfhood. If 2) is true then even after the collapse of a cognitive belief, sense of doership and sense of self still may exist (although they don't belng to anyone). I don't know how the relation is between cognitive belief and visceral experience of doership and selfhood actually. But I think that the relation between these two should inform our strategy about how to see through them. To be honest, I think you're a lot smarter than me about this stuff. I'm not so hot at deciphering, but let me see if I got you straight: You're saying that either the cognitive feeling of self (intellectual), or the biological (automatic, involuntary) sense of self are what's going on. #2 seems a lot closer to the money. That's pretty much what Enigma was just saying, I think. There is a feeling of doership present because you are supposedly the stuff happening, but it isn't personal. I don't know about the relationship between the two either, but in my experience I'll just find something else to see through once I finish seeing through those. I would go with 2) aswell, but I'm not sure that it's correct. @"Seeing no-self in a split second and still wanting "self" to permanently fall away." I'm not really sure what you're expecting. When you see no-self in a split second, do you see that the belief that there is a traditional self is unjustified? Or does the seeing also include how the "sense of self" and "sense of doership" are simply impersonal events? If the latter are simple biological processes, why do you want them to fall away? Maybe they aren't at all manifestations of a self-delusion and will contunue even after enlightenment? Do you want some sort of a depersonalization state? I've done the no-self excercises a few months ago and have discovered that sense of self and sense of doership are just processes and that the thought "I am" is circular and doesn't refer to an entity and doesn't even refer to the sense of self. But I would be very reluctant to call it a realization, and it seems to be in the realm of intellectual knowledge based on phenomenological observation and deriving of conclusions based on the observations. So I've never had a subtle mind-blowing realization event and no feeling of liberation or freedom associated with it. Though I too can in a split second align with the seeing of experience empty of a self by simply directing attention towards actual experience. But there's still the nagging doubt that I've never looked in the way RT recommends, and hencely I am not sure that I've realized no-self as RT recommends.
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Post by therealfake on Jun 24, 2011 14:00:08 GMT -5
Max, there's a pretty substantial difference between seeing that there is no self and having it actually fall away. I can see it in a split second, but it hasn't fallen away. yes, that's me too! murky waters. that's why i'm here and not there....drumroll...but looking at anytime, i'm nowhere. <outoftune horn sound> i come back here for a kick in the pants too. but doubts are just part of the atmosphere. sometimes i wonder if it's just a temperament thing, hardwired. Some folks have less of it than others -- E.G. they can be completely wrong about something and have no doubts whatsoever. While others can absolutely clear and accurate and also be trembling with doubt. Folks that traipse around "I'm enlightened" are also the folks who just recently were traipsing around claiming that it was 100% hogwash. Intellectually, dropping the idea of a self is easy enough... But when we look around, we don't 'see' or 'feel' anything different. So, you learn, that dropping the idea of a self, is a spiritual game... A clever game that the mind plays to avoid the actuality, of the mind coming face to face with God, and the non conceptual world, of which a short glimpse of would put the mind in the psyche ward... ;D When you realize that this whole mental projection of the world is here for one reason, that being so the awareness has a place to learn what it's like to be a human... Dropping of the self takes on a more practical and consequently deadly reality... A little to risky for the mind, me thinks, and a task only for those who must absolutely know the truth, or those that are foolish... Or others, like me, who like to scare the crap out of themselves...
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Post by Portto on Jun 24, 2011 14:09:11 GMT -5
I am not sure that I've realized no-self Don't tell me the above phrase doesn't make you laugh!
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Post by heretic on Jun 24, 2011 14:09:39 GMT -5
I'm trying to think what would scare the crap out of me... I once had the experience of trying to breathe(because I was not breathing at all) when I slipped out of the silence during meditation. While trying to catch my breath, I had the feeling of falling and I couldn't stop it..... Frightening, yes. But a few days later, I received the knowledge of what had taken place.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 24, 2011 14:14:38 GMT -5
Intellectually, dropping the idea of a self is easy enough... But when we look around, we don't 'see' or 'feel' anything different. So, you learn, that dropping the idea of a self, is a spiritual game... A clever game that the mind plays to avoid the actuality, of the mind coming face to face with God, and the non conceptual world, of which a short glimpse of would put the mind in the psyche ward... ;D When you realize that this whole mental projection of the world is here for one reason, that being so the awareness has a place to learn what it's like to be a human... Dropping of the self takes on a more practical and consequently deadly reality... A little to risky for the mind, me thinks, and a task only for those who must absolutely know the truth, or those that are foolish... Or others, like me, who like to scare the crap out of themselves... sheesh, you're starting to scare me! didn't Kate just write about this? no-self-aphobia
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Post by question on Jun 24, 2011 14:17:38 GMT -5
I am not sure that I've realized no-self Don't tell me the above phrase doesn't make you laugh! The first two, three times maybe. But the joke has worn off a long time ago. It's funny only if you misinterpret the context within which "I am not sure", "I have" and "no-self" is used.
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Post by Portto on Jun 24, 2011 14:35:01 GMT -5
Don't tell me the above phrase doesn't make you laugh! The first two, three times maybe. But the joke has worn off a long time ago. It's funny only if you misinterpret the context within which "I am not sure", "I have" and "no-self" is used. So you still take your thoughts seriously...
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Post by enigma on Jun 24, 2011 15:09:48 GMT -5
I would say a more useful 'noticing' would be the ability to not see what we don't want to see. I see this ability demonstrated every day on these forums and it continues to amaze me.
As such, the realization or 'experience' of non-dual awareness is very often not a permanent transformation, which is why we talk about 'abiding non-dual awareness'. We're actually saying mind can return to business as usual even after a clear realization beyond all concepts. One lady I knew referred to this as 'falling off the enlightenment wagon'. After 2 years of freedom, ego came back to play.
So how is this possible, that there can be an absolute knowing, and actual freedom from suffering, and yet mind is fully re-engaged as a personal identity? This lady's perception was that she "missed the raunchiness of her self". So we get the sense of something more subtle that retains an interest in the game and simply falls back into it in perfect innocence, with no thought of personal preferences and no particular fear about outcomes.
This is actually how the mind/body functions, which is why it can contradict the intentions of the personal identification that is overlaid on top of this spontaneous functioning. Hencely, it becomes more a matter of willingness than practice, understanding, experience or even realization. It seems that the game is over when it's over.
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Post by heretic on Jun 24, 2011 15:16:55 GMT -5
I would say a more useful 'noticing' would be the ability to not see what we don't want to see. I see this ability demonstrated every day on these forums and it continues to amaze me. As such, the realization or 'experience' of non-dual awareness is very often not a permanent transformation, which is why we talk about 'abiding non-dual awareness'. We're actually saying mind can return to business as usual even after a clear realization beyond all concepts. One lady I knew referred to this as 'falling off the enlightenment wagon'. After 2 years of freedom, ego came back to play. So how is this possible, that there can be an absolute knowing, and actual freedom from suffering, and yet mind is fully re-engaged as a personal identity? This lady's perception was that she "missed the raunchiness of her self". So we get the sense of something more subtle that retains an interest in the game and simply falls back into it in perfect innocence, with no thought of personal preferences and no particular fear about outcomes. This is actually how the mind/body functions, which is why it can contradict the intentions of the personal identification that is overlaid on top of this spontaneous functioning. Hencely, it becomes more a matter of willingness than practice, understanding, experience or even realization. It seems that the game is over when it's over.
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Post by heretic on Jun 24, 2011 15:18:16 GMT -5
I'm trying to think what would scare the crap out of me... I once had the experience of trying to breathe(because I was not breathing at all) when I slipped out of the silence during meditation. While trying to catch my breath, I had the feeling of falling and I couldn't stop it..... Frightening, yes. But a few days later, I received the knowledge of what had taken place. TRF Hello...Hello....is this thing on?! ;D
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Post by therealfake on Jun 24, 2011 15:26:08 GMT -5
I'm trying to think what would scare the crap out of me... I once had the experience of trying to breathe(because I was not breathing at all) when I slipped out of the silence during meditation. While trying to catch my breath, I had the feeling of falling and I couldn't stop it..... Frightening, yes. But a few days later, I received the knowledge of what had taken place. I liked your falling in med story, so you have a sense about what I'm talking about... Of course there's nothing you can 'think' of that can scare the crap out of you... Maybe induce a little physiological fear... I'm talking about a real 'physical' encounter between the ego/mind and the existing non conceptual world. It's the mind's catastrophic reaction to seeing that non conceptual world and how it stops the minds continuance of the world. The world of everyday perception. The mind upholds the everyday world through it's projections, but when there is a disruption, through an illness or an accident, or drugs, etc... That continuity collapses and if the mind can't rebuild the continuity quickly enough, it faces it's own worst nightmare, the realization that it is an illusion. And since the mind and body are connected, that temporary ego/mind death manifests as a physical jolt in the body... The body is resilient though and can handle most jolts. But for some who don't want to take that chance, it's safer to be virtually (intellectually) awakened, rather than actually awakened...
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