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Post by therealfake on Feb 26, 2012 19:15:23 GMT -5
Yep. This place seems to have a serious tendency to make people go crazy. Irrelevant Your silence here is all we need. Stop posting. Freejoy how are you able to type wearing that straight jacket?
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Post by Beingist on Feb 27, 2012 12:42:45 GMT -5
Oh, definitely freejoy. No doubt about it. Yep. This place seems to have a serious tendency to make people go crazy. Divine madness?
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Post by therealfake on Feb 27, 2012 12:58:43 GMT -5
Yep. This place seems to have a serious tendency to make people go crazy. Divine madness? I think it's a malady that afflicts the whole human race, some more than others, and so it seems normal. In the eyes of the afflicted, it's the ones who exhibit Divine Clarity, that are the real mad men... ;D
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2013 17:05:46 GMT -5
Everything you and I and everyone else has ever posted are thought thinking thoughts about thoughts. If we weren't doing that there would be nothing on the forum. We are using our thoughts to attempt to point away from thought. not so....most of the conversation here points toward the subtle kind of minding which is sensate experience, or more commonly at pschoanalysis....Even THIS as it is used by most of you, as was the case with Marie's french fry, is pointing toward minding in most cases you can use ZD and Enigma as the most common steriotypical pointing toward minding....ZD is almost always pojnting toward sensate minding, Enigma is almost always pointing toward minding about minding, or psychoanalysis. ironically, Exactamente spends most of his time being a lyer making up storylines, often about me here....but when he is not doing that he is the only one besides myself that is not pointing at more minding beingest is comming close to not pointing toward minding and toward Essential Nature though Happy Birthday Tath (and all the rest of you January firsters ;-) miss you brother, hope all is well
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2013 7:51:47 GMT -5
Realizations are usually very funny; at least they are to me. Most of my realizations have been extremely powerful and memorable. This may be because I was so strongly attached to various ideas that when they collapsed, the effect was stunning. About two years after we got married, Carol and I were talking about how we disliked peeps who pushed their views on everyone. In the course of the conversation we realized that we were periodically guilty of doing exactly the same thing. Consequently, we made a New Year's resolution to stop proslytizing. The term "proslytizing" is pejorative, and that's the way we thought about it. A missionary, for example, badgers people who are potential converts to exchange their belief system for whatever belief system the missionary thinks is the "correct" belief system. We equated the term "pejorative" with that kind of badgering over correctness. A week or so after making our resolution, Carol and I went to a party, and every time a discussion arose about which I had an opinion, I forced myself to be silent. Although there was a strong internal impulse to voice various ideas, I stuffed them, all because of our New Year's resolution. This happened several times, and for about two weeks or so, I managed to keep my mouth shut every time I was tempted to voice an opinion. One day I was driving somewhere, and suddenly, right out of the blue, I had a huge realization; I realized that I was a proslytizer! The realization was so powerful that I laughed out loud. As soon as I got home, I ran to Carol and said, "Hey, you know that New Year's resolution we made? Well, it's total BS. I'm a proslytizer. I LOVE to tell people what I think. I LOVE to teach. I LOVE to talk about whatever interests me. The whole idea that I shouldn't do what I love to do is total crap." Today, I still get a laugh when I think about that realization and our artificial attempt to be other than what we were and to live up to some imaginary ideal. Today, however, to illustrate how things have changed over the last thirty-three years, I would not call myself a proslytizer because I no longer shove ideas upon people; I simply present them in the context of my own experience and offer them as possibilities to consider. I share ideas that I think will interest people, but I am not invested in what happens as a consequence. If someone isn't interested in a particular issue, this becomes immediately obvious, and I simply drop it. A second major realization occurred a few years into our marriage. One day I was thinking about how no one has any control over who they fall in love with; it's a total mystery. Well, as I was thinking about this, it dawned on me that whether one STAYS in love with someone is also a mystery. This thought led to the sickening realization that I had no control over whether I would remain in love with Carol in the future. This thought generated a huge surge of fear because I wanted to stay in love, but I realized that I had no control over what might happen in the future. This realization literally took the ground out from under me, and filled me with horror. I realized that I had absolutely no control over who I loved, and if this was the case, which was obvious, then it meant that I had no control over anything that might happen! I lived with this sense of horror for about three days, and then I had an even deeper realization. I realized that it didn't matter. I could either accept the obvious or resist it, and even this choice was not up to me. The only thing that mattered was the love I felt NOW, and if things changed in the future, that would be the case NOW. I relaxed, gave up the illusion of control, and realized that if two people stay in love, its a very lucky thing. After that, I didn't have to think about it anymore. I was in love, and the future would have to play out however it would play out. The third big realization was actually a whole group of realizations that occurred simultaneously as a result of a woo woo experience, and that story would be too involved for inclusion here. The fourth big realization I remember occurred during my first Zen retreat. Zen retreats are very intense affairs. Each day you get up at 4:30 AM and do 108 protration bows, then chant for almost an hour, and then, between silent meals, spend almost the entire day in silent meditation while sitting cross-legged in the lotus position. The day ends at 9:30 PM after chanting the Heart Sutra. After only one day, I was physically and mentally exhausted and wondered, "What kind of craziness have I gotten myself into?" I plowed through the second day getting angrier and angrier and more and more exhausted. As we started chanting the Heart Sutra at the end of the second day, a very powerful question arose to the surface of my mind, "Why are we chanting this stupid sutra in Korean? We're Americans and we speak English! This is nuts! Why are we doing this?" This question had me fuming with anger, but as we came to the last lines of the sutra (gate gate paragate, parasamgate, etc) tears began to fill my eyes and I became very emotional. I knew that the words meant, "Gone, gone, gone beyond to the other shore," and the meaning struck something deep within. Whatever was happening internally was not slowing down or stopping, so when the chant ended, I quickly rushed outside the house and into the street. I was beginning to sob with emotion as the bottom of my mind fell out, and I was plunged into deep emptiness. In that emptiness I suddenly realized why we had been chanting the sutra in Korean. It was so obvious that my tears instantly turned to laughter. We were chanting in Korean because a Korean Zen master had set up the retreat format and produced the literature we were using!!!! I found this to be hysterically funny, but after this experience, I realized--- and this was the big one Elizabeth--- that all ideational meaning is imaginary. I suddenly saw the difference between relative meaning that comes from the mind and absolute meaning that is eternally extant. How this personal koan about why we were chanting in Korean arose to the surface of the mind, was a complete mystery, and how it was seen-through was an equal mystery. It is just what happened. The following two days generated another huge realization, which was more interesting than funny, but that's a story for another time. Suffice it to say that life is one hell of a trip! Enjoy the ride! bump
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2013 7:52:33 GMT -5
What does it mean to say Truth is self evident? Knowledge requires evidence to support it, and so no knowledge is self evident, but Truth does not refer to knowledge. This self evident, non-conceptual nature applies to all genuine realizations, no matter how small, because the nature of a realization is the seeing of what is NOT so; the collapse of a belief. This realization is not an idea or a thought or conclusion, and so it is not seen as part of the temporal flow of experience as events occurring in time. As such, realization is timeless, and occurs as a flash of insight. We've all had them so it's not something woo woo. Since it is not thought, it is not the knowing of some knowledge that can be stored in memory and recalled later. As such, a realization can only be realized NOW. No matter how many times you notice it, it will never become a part of your knowledge base as something that you know. You cannot know anything. All knowledge is subject to doubt. Since a realization is not knowledge, it is not seen as something that can be true or false. For the same reason it's also not subject to the need to be supported by evidence. There a 'rule' in logic that says you can't prove a negative. We all intuitive know that it would be impossible to search every corner of the universe to prove that unicorns don't exist, but the dilemma is more obvious than that. It's not so much that a negative can't be proven, but that it doesn't require proof. As they say, the burden of proof is on the one making the assertion. No knowledge or evidence is required to realize that something is NOT so, assuming that this is the case. The realization that there is no volition is not the knowing of some knowledge that you acquire and then believe to be true. It is not something that you need evidence to support. It is not a thought or a conclusion any more than 'no unicorns' is true knowledge that you can support with evidence. It's the realization that volition was an idea, an assumption, conclusion that never had any more foundation than unicorns. You are not left with a belief in nonvolition, or a true concept about volition, you are left with nothing. Volition is irrelevant. The realization of oneness is not knowledge about oneness or the visceral experience of everything mushed together into a oneness glob, it's the seeing that the idea of separation was assumption, conclusion, imagination, and never had a leg to stand on. The issue of separation is irrelevant. The realization that you are not a mind/body is the noticing that the idea that you are a thing or a label is absurd. The issue of identification is irrelevant. As realizations are not in the domain of thoughts and proof and doubt, you cannot turn your realization over to mind for it to think about. If you do, mind WILL find evidence to support it's preferred conclusions. This is why I talk about your realizations being sovereign. You see what you see, timelessly with absolute self evident clarity. Mind is the servant of that seeing, not it's master. 'nother bump ;-)
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2013 8:32:07 GMT -5
I used to think of a "Realization" as being like one swift blow of an axe to the back of the neck ... which now I assume was just a 'seeker's fantasy' of achieving something .. ie. "I want to be enlightened".
I assume that realizations 'come in all shapes and sizes', and that everyone has them at some time or another, whether they are on some kind of spiritual journey or not .. ie. a belief that was here yesterday is gone today.
But some realizations seem 'more important than others', as if a deeply held belief, which was 'leading you around by the nose' is "seen through" .. and then falls away.
It seems that as one of those deeply imbedded beliefs falls away, there can be an 'adjustment period', an aftermath of weeks or months in duration, a "sorting out".
Can anyone speak to this?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2013 8:45:14 GMT -5
I used to think of a "Realization" as being like one swift blow of an axe to the back of the neck ... which now I assume was just a 'seeker's fantasy' of achieving something .. ie. "I want to be enlightened". I assume that realizations 'come in all shapes and sizes', and that everyone has them at some time or another, whether they are on some kind of spiritual journey or not .. ie. a belief that here yesterday is gone today. But some realizations seem 'more important than others', as if a deeply held belief, which was 'leading you around by the nose' is "seen through" .. and then falls away. It seems that as one of those deeply imbedded beliefs falls away, there can be an 'adjustment period', an aftermath of weeks or months in duration, a "sorting out". Can anyone speak to this? I once had the realization that everything is prefect. It took a long time to understand. It's prefect whether I turn right or left. The universe seems to compensate. So it's kind of irrelevant.
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Post by chinabelle on Aug 12, 2013 9:11:55 GMT -5
I used to think of a "Realization" as being like one swift blow of an axe to the back of the neck ... which now I assume was just a 'seeker's fantasy' of achieving something .. ie. "I want to be enlightened". I assume that realizations 'come in all shapes and sizes', and that everyone has them at some time or another, whether they are on some kind of spiritual journey or not .. ie. a belief that here yesterday is gone today. But some realizations seem 'more important than others', as if a deeply held belief, which was 'leading you around by the nose' is "seen through" .. and then falls away. It seems that as one of those deeply imbedded beliefs falls away, there can be an 'adjustment period', an aftermath of weeks or months in duration, a "sorting out". Can anyone speak to this? www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJND1O2coXg
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2013 9:55:20 GMT -5
I once had the realization that everything is prefect. It took a long time to understand. It's prefect whether I turn right or left. The universe seems to compensate. So it's kind of irrelevant. well yeah ok, I'm in the "it's all perfect" camp also ... until mind says otherwise. lol if a left turn was required to catch your plane on time, and you missed your flight, then sometimes mind has a fit .. but yeah, its still *perfect* whether you're driving home, or on that flight to Vegas. ;-)
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Post by serpentqueen on Aug 12, 2013 10:44:03 GMT -5
I used to think of a "Realization" as being like one swift blow of an axe to the back of the neck ... which now I assume was just a 'seeker's fantasy' of achieving something .. ie. "I want to be enlightened". I assume that realizations 'come in all shapes and sizes', and that everyone has them at some time or another, whether they are on some kind of spiritual journey or not .. ie. a belief that here yesterday is gone today.
But some realizations seem 'more important than others', as if a deeply held belief, which was 'leading you around by the nose' is "seen through" .. and then falls away. It seems that as one of those deeply imbedded beliefs falls away, there can be an 'adjustment period', an aftermath of weeks or months in duration, a "sorting out". Can anyone speak to this? I'm still sorting out. Last 5 months have been like this: For about a month, no thought, and no desire to talk about it or write about it. Because there's nothing to think about, desire, talk or write about. Just sat with it and quietly observed... with occasional giddy moments with the thought arising, "how could the obvious been overlooked for so long?" Then came a day when the desire to put it down on paper came, and I wrote and wrote, 10 pages long. What followed then was a period when I went back to past experiences and re-examined them from a new perspective. Call this the "archeological digging stage," tracing back to when the "I thought" was initially formed. This wasn't necessary but it just happened naturally. It was like, "look, see.. now put it all to rest." It was like writing a fairy tale, full well knowing it's just a fairy tale. Then life threw us a bunch of curve balls leaving no time for contemplation as we were just busy reacting/dealing with family issues etc. Call this the "putting the present into perspective stage." During this period it was like life was showing me clearly what the mirror of all my significant relationships has been trying to show me all along. A lot of emotional processing and release in this stage. To put it metaphorically, it was like what they say "the actors take off their masks and you see they've been acting all along." I don't know if I'm doing this justice... it was an intense period of time. Not woo-woo but definitely a lot of wordless "ah ha" moments, followed by emotional relief. And there was also a lot of... jettisoning. Of situations (such as my participation in SF) that had served their purpose and were no longer needed. Then things got quiet and activity screeched to a halt, leaving lots and lots of empty downtime, with nothing presenting itself to be done. Which is around the time I came here. And I've written about that here. Some days the mind is going a million miles an hour. Some days there's very little thought. It does seem like a grieving process of sorts, but a normal one. Of course grief would happen; the self has been a reliable and trusted friend for so long, and now it's just gone. I can see the mind is at a loss, and sometimes it tries to find things to do, to make itself useful again. Sometimes it's amusing, it's like when someone retires, and even though retirement was longed for and dreamed about and planned for, retirement comes as a shock... "What am I supposed to DO with my day NOW? Are you sure you wouldn't like a nice pleasant daydream to fill your time? Or I can find some question for pondering... how about the future? Can I offer you a nice obsession about what next?" But I don't need to obsess over that question. What next will be what's next. And life gave a glimpse of that, over this weekend. My brother came to visit me. All I can say is, he's also been smoking whatever I've been smoking. We didn't need to talk about it, it was just somehow... understood. All he had to do is mention "Reality" and I knew. He is a cancer survivor; his battle with cancer led to his own realization a few years back. I asked and he said "yes, but there's nothing to talk about, is there?" and we laughed. I watched him all weekend, how he operates. He just floats along, moment to moment, completely at ease in life. Everywhere we went, striking up conversations with random strangers with this total ease. He is so different now. Our visits used to consist of the two of us trying to "one up" each other, to win debates, often disintegrating into a contest of who can talk more loudly. This visit we did none of that, in fact, we didn't talk all that much either. We were just quietly, contentedly together.
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Post by laughter on Aug 12, 2013 10:56:09 GMT -5
I used to think of a "Realization" as being like one swift blow of an axe to the back of the neck ... which now I assume was just a 'seeker's fantasy' of achieving something .. ie. "I want to be enlightened". I assume that realizations 'come in all shapes and sizes', and that everyone has them at some time or another, whether they are on some kind of spiritual journey or not .. ie. a belief that was here yesterday is gone today. But some realizations seem 'more important than others', as if a deeply held belief, which was 'leading you around by the nose' is "seen through" .. and then falls away. It seems that as one of those deeply imbedded beliefs falls away, there can be an 'adjustment period', an aftermath of weeks or months in duration, a "sorting out". Can anyone speak to this? Gonna drag this over here and repeat it: Seems to my thinking/feeling mind that the interplay between thinking/feeling mind and realization(s) is interesting to and seems complex to the thinking/feeling mind. Seems to me that there are as many permutations as to the order in which realizations happen and the backstory as to what supposedly precipitated them as there are people. Here, I'll compare notes with ZD: A second major realization occurred a few years into our marriage. One day I was thinking about how no one has any control over who they fall in love with; it's a total mystery. Well, as I was thinking about this, it dawned on me that whether one STAYS in love with someone is also a mystery. This thought led to the sickening realization that I had no control over whether I would remain in love with Carol in the future. This thought generated a huge surge of fear because I wanted to stay in love, but I realized that I had no control over what might happen in the future. This realization literally took the ground out from under me, and filled me with horror. I realized that I had absolutely no control over who I loved, and if this was the case, which was obvious, then it meant that I had no control over anything that might happen! I lived with this sense of horror for about three days, and then I had an even deeper realization. I realized that it didn't matter. I could either accept the obvious or resist it, and even this choice was not up to me. The only thing that mattered was the love I felt NOW, and if things changed in the future, that would be the case NOW. I relaxed, gave up the illusion of control, and realized that if two people stay in love, its a very lucky thing. After that, I didn't have to think about it anymore. I was in love, and the future would have to play out however it would play out. For me the idea that "control is an illusion" is part of my early conditioning. I can't pinpoint when I realized that control is an illusion based on experience, but it happened long long ago, and it's certainly no achievement when it's based on something your parents fill you in on when you're a little kid. I also never could figure out what people meant when they saw shapes up in the clouds ... I always just got high lookin' at the sky. I realized--- and this was the big one Elizabeth--- that all ideational meaning is imaginary. I suddenly saw the difference between relative meaning that comes from the mind and absolute meaning that is eternally extant. For me this happened years after my exposure to the QM chegg but decades before my self-inquiry woo-woo and the faux causal elements that I'd ascribe to it were philosophical discussions that I had with my wife -- her speaking from a combination of a liberal arts background and Christianity light, me speaking as an agnostic material monist. The fact that my father, at ground, never took any conceptual structure that seriously probably didn't hurt either. He was rather unique as a father as he spent most of his adolescence in the Catholic seminary, was a very devote Catholic until about the age of 16 or 17 when he suddenly left and renounced all religion and would never say why. I'd state this as a realization as to the fundamental nature of abstraction and truth -- that there is no such thing as an absolute truth and the gaping chasm between an abstraction and what are abstracted are obvious points for the mind if it simply looks. </end, tale told on a bridge> Seems to me that there are two realizations that change the game: 1) The chimera of personal identity 2) The availability, in any instant, of the feeling of our felt sense of oneness with being. What the thinking/feeling mind takes as the sense "I am". Seems to me, that after these, mind doesn't inform and is of no use in informing but has the further potential to be informed.
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Post by enigma on Aug 12, 2013 10:57:11 GMT -5
I used to think of a "Realization" as being like one swift blow of an axe to the back of the neck ... which now I assume was just a 'seeker's fantasy' of achieving something .. ie. "I want to be enlightened". I assume that realizations 'come in all shapes and sizes', and that everyone has them at some time or another, whether they are on some kind of spiritual journey or not .. ie. a belief that was here yesterday is gone today. But some realizations seem 'more important than others', as if a deeply held belief, which was 'leading you around by the nose' is "seen through" .. and then falls away. It seems that as one of those deeply imbedded beliefs falls away, there can be an 'adjustment period', an aftermath of weeks or months in duration, a "sorting out". Can anyone speak to this? Yes, this is a period in which mind is informed of the implications of that particular realization. It takes time because the realization amounts to a loss and mind has no interest in losing anything, so attention isn't focused on implications. Regardless, since the realization is self evident, it eats away at the corresponding belief structure, involving beliefs that arise out of beliefs and are connected in complex ways that are not always apparent. The actual effect of a realization may even go unnoticed by mind because again, mind has no interest in something that is NOT being felt, thought or experienced anymore. In this sense, mind is usually the last to know, as in, 'at some point I just stopped being angry, and I don't know why', or, 'The sense of self just vanished at some point for reasons unknown'. This is why 'self realization' can be seen as uneventful, and the experience ordinary, (unless mind has created a woo woo experience to go with it) and yet that uneventful ordinariness is quite extraordinary, both in the sense of what no longer occurs, and in the sense of what becomes apparent in that absence.
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Post by enigma on Aug 12, 2013 10:59:09 GMT -5
I used to think of a "Realization" as being like one swift blow of an axe to the back of the neck ... which now I assume was just a 'seeker's fantasy' of achieving something .. ie. "I want to be enlightened". I assume that realizations 'come in all shapes and sizes', and that everyone has them at some time or another, whether they are on some kind of spiritual journey or not .. ie. a belief that here yesterday is gone today. But some realizations seem 'more important than others', as if a deeply held belief, which was 'leading you around by the nose' is "seen through" .. and then falls away. It seems that as one of those deeply imbedded beliefs falls away, there can be an 'adjustment period', an aftermath of weeks or months in duration, a "sorting out". Can anyone speak to this? I once had the realization that everything is prefect. It took a long time to understand. It's prefect whether I turn right or left. The universe seems to compensate. So it's kind of irrelevant. The universe compensates if you turn the wrong direction?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2013 11:01:07 GMT -5
In my experience, being present with the presence of "death" offers the simplest self evident realization, which encompasses all other realizations.
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