You did answer my questions, thank you Tathagata. Most often people don't, they just pick the one topic that seems easiest to argue and bash back on that -
a varient of the Straw Man technique. So thank you for that.
It must be quite new to you then, this Enlightenment lark?
You asked if I (or people in general) thought time mattered once one gained Enlightenment. In some ways, no. But in other ways, I think it's important to realise that gaining Enlightenment doesn't mean you automatically also gain a skillset. For example, you don't immediately gain the ability to write coherently, or to listen, or to see inside another person to understand where they're coming from and what they need to hear in that particular moment.
These are skillsets that take years of work to develop. I mean, if you did suddenly become endowed with them,
you probably wouldn't be getting "push back" from so many posters here. Or do you think that's happening just because they're working from their egos and it's their problem not yours? Do you think that annoying people is the best thing for them in that moment? I don't think it is, I think you'll find it just turns people off from you and your message.13 years ago steven cundiff had a similar experience...in meditation he dropped into... Yeah, I spent a bit of time talking in the 3rd person when I thought I'd gained Enlightenment. You'll get over it.
LOL...I had to look up straw man technique, I'll repost a part of the explaination I found in wikipedia:
The straw man fallacy occurs in the following pattern of argument:
1.Person A has position X.
2.Person B disregards certain key points of X and instead presents the superficially similar position Y. Thus, Y is a resulting distorted version of X and can be set up in several ways, including:
1.Presenting a misrepresentation of the opponent's position.
2.Quoting an opponent's words out of context — i.e. choosing quotations that misrepresent the opponent's actual intentions (see fallacy of quoting out of context).[2] (this one gets used alot!)
3.Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, then refuting that person's arguments — thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position (and thus the position itself) has been defeated.[1]
4.Inventing a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs which are then criticized, implying that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical. (Ciggeratte men and wanabe guru's and teachers) crystal wavers included here too ;-)
5.Oversimplifying an opponent's argument, then attacking this oversimplified version. This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious, because attacking a distorted version of a position fails to constitute an attack on the actual position.
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Just a couple points of clarification: I dont have a message...I think it would be hard to decifer some kind of clear message in the sum total of what I've written here lol...
An unplanned for MISSION might fit better than to say I had a message or anything to teach.
The mission seems to have been this...this sight is overwhelmingly not much more than a philosophical debate of competing ideas....but building and fine tuning ideas is the opposite of the spiritual path of no attachment, no ego, knowing the the full self, lifting the veil of illusion regarding seperatness etc... One is the building up of the ego self, the other is the unding of the ego self...I have given up on defining myself and trying for a goal and even self preservation lol..(there is a post on this at the end of the thread I started in the introduction section)...what everyone else considers enlightenment or the penny dropping here is something I experienced 13 years ago...a couple of months ago something else happened...
If the self realization of the zen masters, wherein you realize through direct experience the no thingness nature of yourself and the oneness beyond oneness is Enlightenment, then that was something that happened 13 years ago...but then something else happened a few months ago... something akin to the vedic ideas of union with god/brahma or more accurately absolute SURRENDER to conciousness or stillness. With that came the end of attachments...attachments to ideas, goals, plans, agendas, choices, the self, even survival. And with that came an absolute, even profound freedom. Having exited the self imposed prison of ideas, judgments, philosophies, self preservation, world views, plans etc., its easy to see how those things manifest....So maybe a new vernacular is needed...maybe there was realization of the true self,(and if that is enlightenment what is this next thing?) and then some years later the surrendering of my existance to that true self.
There are many people here who have been enlightened...Peter, porto, zendancer, onehandclapping, acewall, therealfake...just to name a few...all of them have clearly had the self realization of their true nature, but knowing what you are does not make you free, and neither does ending your spiritual search...being free makes you free lol...the effort to end all attachments should not end just becuase you realized your true nature, it should continue until you are free of them...All of you that have realized your true nature can easily sees the nature of the illusion of seperateness in others...its something anyone can see that has moved from the illusion of seperateness to the truth of oneness...equally so, having freed myself of all attachments, even attachments to myself, I can see those attachments very easliy...its kind of like understanding the nature of a prison cell once you've taken it apart and escaped it...and this is why I have said no one here is enlightened except for acewall that I have interacted with...I didnt say this as an effort to say I and acewall have had some kind of realization of ourselves that is a deeper or more advanced realization than many others here, I have said it becuase in every other person here I have seen attachments to something...even if it was only attachment to ideas, or attachment to self...
Zendancer once said that a few months after enlightenment you have a kind of enlightenment sickness...this is true...when I realized my true nature years ago for months I had the kind of enlightenment sickness he described...and in many ways I do again now that I went through the great surrendering a few months back lol...I want everyone to experience this level of freedom from themselves lol...only this time it is not a sickness of teaching something profound...it is a sickness of wanting to break people free of their self imposed prison of ideas and attachments lol
Which brings us to the straw man argument...and the annoyance factor.
This is largely an exestential philosophical debate forum...it is a sight for the distilling of exestential ideas...there are however some genuine seekers here...some of those seekers run the risk of getting cuaght up in a new version of prison by creating a whole new set of ideas and philosophies and the ego attachments that come with those...So I went outside the main thread and sat down and offered to answer questions instead of adding more ideas to the mix of self imprisonment...
When people asked a question I would do two things...ask them questions so I could see what there ideas and thought processes where so I could understand the nature of their prison, and then I would offer techniques to undo those ideas.
But man did that upset the idea curmudgens here lol...they came in and got all upset and then when I didnt give them any specific thing to be upset about the whole straw man thing came into play...all of the five methods listed above where used...but especially number 4 lol...
Endlessly people have tried to pigeonhole me into a category of a type of person or as someone trying to put forth a message within some kind of agenda lol...but in every case everything that I've written here, (if reviewed in context, meaning as a rsponse to something someone else has said in a thread) has been nothing but the challenging of and undoing of attachment to some idea or the self...
It may be that over time I will develop more skill in this lol...but It wont be as a result of trying, but for now when I see some attachment to some idea, or to a judgment, or to the self, I have only been able to respond in one of two ways:
1. Offer a technique to undo the idea or judgment or attachment.
2. If the person is so attached to their idea or ideas that they will not even try the technique I will just challenge their ideas themselves...often with an idea counter to theirs...recently people have been adopting the counter ideas that I origanally put out there to counter their idea, at which time I switch to a differant counter idea...
all I've done in every post is challenge the ideas that keep people in a kind of attachment based prison, and lots of straw man responses have been formed lol...then I challenge those straw man response
ideas lol
When you challenge the ideas that people are attached to they often feel attacked...especially in this type of interaction in an open forum...if we were in an ashram and everybody was interacting in a way that i was their guru they would not see what I was doing as an attack, becuase in that enviornment you expect that everything the guru is doing is to help you in some way...so you dont feel attacked...but in a forum of exestential philosophy that is there for competing ideas to develop and take root a undoing of ideas is felt as an attack...but its not...its not an attack on someone, its an attack on the prison bars of someone, its an attack on a particular form of attachment lol.
Once enigma said that I obviously dont like to be disagreed with lol...a more accurate statement would be that in this moment it Iam challenging you idea and the attachment that idea creates...
As to the use of my name in the third person lol...I only did that once and it was becuse I was talking to onehandclapping, who had questioned in some way who I was talking about...was I talking about the individual identity in the world of forms, or was I talking about the eternal self...so I used my name in third person to say that in that moment I was talking about the individual identity...sorry if it engendered some kind of idea about an ego display brother....thats the danger of posting in an open forum...things said to one person can seem like something else when looked at out of context.
