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Post by andrew on May 22, 2012 11:19:43 GMT -5
Yes, and the negativity is expected from all the single ended joy-stick seekers, and it's okay, but I thought maybe it was a way to make a point about this 'absence'. I was mistaken about that. Hehe. How is it 'negativity' to try to explain to someone that joy is not inextricably linked to suffering....that to experience a high level of joy does not necessarily mean that an hour later, or a day later, or even a week later, one MUST then experience a depth of emotional angst? From what I can garner, the point of your story was that even in the face of terror, there can be an identification with the core of peace within, and this will result in a certain sense of insulation from any actual suffering, and I do not disagree with this, however, this holding oneself apart from the experience at hand by choosing to place our focus of attention upon the one who does not suffer is only necessary when thoughts are still being believed to be true. When thoughts are no longer believed (when the whole thing has been seen through) terror no longer arises. Therefore, I'd say that what Andrew and I are offering here is anything but 'negative.' We're trying to relay that beyond what you've described, an actual abiding experience of grace can be accessed....when you've 'really' seen through 'the whole scam', there will no longer be any resistance and thus no need to hold yourself apart from such things as terror by identifying with the core of peace within, because the terror will no longer arise. To once again quote Tolle: "To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness...." Do you perceive that quote to be 'negative'?  Because its message is the crux of what Andrew and I are attempting to explain. Yes. I think you have captured the crux of the issue very well here. |
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Post by enigma on May 22, 2012 11:25:09 GMT -5
Yes, and the negativity is expected from all the single ended joy-stick seekers, and it's okay, but I thought maybe it was a way to make a point about this 'absence'. I was mistaken about that. Hehe. How is it 'negativity' to try to explain to someone that joy is not inextricably linked to suffering.... Nobody ever said it was. This is just how the gerbils spin. We could say the whole point of this forum is to say suffering is not required. Nobody ever said that would happen. You started believing Andrew's posts about what he imagined I was saying. No, that wasn't the point. Peace is not an insulation from suffering or anything else. It is fundamentally an absence. I can only assume that you are talking about yourselves because you're not talking about me. The problem is you're both just theorizing about this peace and imagining you know it, and then reinforcing this idea by projecting your ignorance onto me and trying to fix me. Your peace that makes negativity impossible is this insulating barrier that you talk about. If fear cannot happen in peace, then peace cannot happen in fear. This makes peace conditional. What Peace actually is, is not conditional. Andrew, on the other hand, is looking for all the good stuff without any of the bad stuff, and in order to avoid the two-ended stick, he has to imagine that the good stuff has some kind of absolute quality to it, and yet Beingness is qualityless. This billion year joy has no absolute origin in which to establish itself. |
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Post by enigma on May 22, 2012 11:30:01 GMT -5
I've said nothing at all about what I'm currently experiencing. To do so would be to encourage your focus and degenerate the conversations even further into a battle of the bliss bunnies. I related a specific experience for a particular purpose. Well, actually you have talked about your experience. One such thing you have said is.... ''If there is indeed a calm center at the eye of the storm (there is) it's not a mind center, so it is not a mind split.'' This is mind splitting and a re-location of 'you'. A insulation strategy. There is nothing WRONG with it as such, however, this strategy does limit our potential for lightness, ease, peace, grace, joy and happiness. The most this position really offers is...'calm'. There is also a level of trickiness involved with what you are doing, in the sense that you point others away from ego and separation, and yet there is ego and separation in this position. There's no 'me' there, no 'there', and no mind to split. You take what I say, distort, assume and conclude, then claim i said what you imagine and go to work to correct what you imagine I said. That's actually how every conversation with you goes. |
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Post by andrew on May 22, 2012 11:30:36 GMT -5
Here's the thing E. I could quite happily talk about an absence of judgement, or absence of attachment, or resistance, of self-image, or conditioned fear....but an absence of these things does not lead to a special enlightened state. An absence of these things leads to more joy, peace, love, lightness, happiness, ease and grace. What I see you doing is describing an 'absence' of some kind as some kind of enlightened state, but there is no enlightened state. When we talk of non-abidance, its not a state, its a way of experiencing which enables us to experience more grace, flow and ease. The reason seekers seek is because they know what is good and they want more of what is good. A trap that many fall into, partly because of dodgy pointing, is thinking there is something better than lightness, ease, grace, joy and peace.
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Post by andrew on May 22, 2012 11:35:45 GMT -5
Well, actually you have talked about your experience. One such thing you have said is.... ''If there is indeed a calm center at the eye of the storm (there is) it's not a mind center, so it is not a mind split.'' This is mind splitting and a re-location of 'you'. A insulation strategy. There is nothing WRONG with it as such, however, this strategy does limit our potential for lightness, ease, peace, grace, joy and happiness. The most this position really offers is...'calm'. There is also a level of trickiness involved with what you are doing, in the sense that you point others away from ego and separation, and yet there is ego and separation in this position. There's no 'me' there, no 'there', and no mind to split. You take what I say, distort, assume and conclude, then claim i said what you imagine and go to work to correct what you imagine I said. That's actually how every conversation with you goes. 'Eye of the storm' dude. You said it yourself. Another one you talk about is 'getting out of the river'. Its the same thing. It is calm because it is so de-personalized and disassociated, but it doesnt leave room for much else that is also good. In order to hold that position we HAVE to hold a bunch of beliefs to be true. We HAVE to identify with a particular state. |
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Post by andrew on May 22, 2012 11:42:05 GMT -5
How is it 'negativity' to try to explain to someone that joy is not inextricably linked to suffering.... Nobody ever said it was. This is just how the gerbils spin. We could say the whole point of this forum is to say suffering is not required. Nobody ever said that would happen. You started believing Andrew's posts about what he imagined I was saying. No, that wasn't the point. Peace is not an insulation from suffering or anything else. It is fundamentally an absence. I can only assume that you are talking about yourselves because you're not talking about me. The problem is you're both just theorizing about this peace and imagining you know it, and then reinforcing this idea by projecting your ignorance onto me and trying to fix me. Your peace that makes negativity impossible is this insulating barrier that you talk about. If fear cannot happen in peace, then peace cannot happen in fear. This makes peace conditional. What Peace actually is, is not conditional. Andrew, on the other hand, is looking for all the good stuff without any of the bad stuff, and in order to avoid the two-ended stick, he has to imagine that the good stuff has some kind of absolute quality to it, and yet Beingness is qualityless. This billion year joy has no absolute origin in which to establish itself. Its all far less complicated than that. In the absence of attachment, resistance, judgement, self-image, conditioned fear etc, there is consistent joy, lightness, ease, grace, love, play, happiness, passion, fulfilment. There are many peeps on the earth today consistently experiencing the good stuff. As Lester Levenson said (paraphrasing)....'nothing good on the spiritual path is lost' |
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2012 12:45:02 GMT -5
Question re: enigma: "it is impossible to have a useful conversation with him." Read more: spiritualteachers.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=misc&action=display&thread=2178&page=3#ixzz1vcaSXsyxPerhaps your definition of "useful" is the issue? From my perspective I've had useful conversations. Clarifications about what different ideas and pointers mean, for example. Question, what is the "useful" element that you find missing in your conversations with enigma? What exactly are you looking for that you find him inadequately addressing? |
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Post by figgy on May 22, 2012 13:25:11 GMT -5
How is it 'negativity' to try to explain to someone that joy is not inextricably linked to suffering.... You don't recall writing this: "yes, and the NEGATIVITY is expected from all the single ended joy-stick seekers...."? And yes, we could say that the whole point of this forum is to say that suffering is not required and indeed, we could apply this point to most spiritual teachings. But its more than JUST an absence of suffering that Andrew and I are pointing to. As humans we have a natural indlincation towards wholeness...towards the light....and our alignment with the light is evidenced through our joy. For some, an absence of direct suffering may be all they feel worthy of claiming. What I attempt to show others is that in the absence of suffering there can be more than just an absence, rather there can be an abundance of actual joy. An 'absence' of what exactly? Self? And why expound upon such an absence? Isn't it to demonstrate that in the absence of belief in a person, there can be no suffering? However we spin any of this, it all boils down to coming to a clarity that frees us from suffering. And what is so great about being free from suffering? We are then free to BE joyous...to celebrate this temporal fleeting experience called life and to flow harmoniously with every magical unfolding that appears to us. Not theorizing at all.  As we've been through before, I am very much speaking here from my own experience and attempting to share with others that living a life of abundant joy is not some 'special' or amazing attainment but instead something that occurs naturally when we are free from resistance and accepting of all that appears. So....you ARE saying that peace can abide simultaneously alongside fear...? I thought you said a few posts back that you were not saying this? peace IS conditional upon one thing; absence of resistance. Acceptance. (they are one in the same) What is meant by saying that 'peace is not conditional' is that any circumstance could be appearing and peace would continue to be. This of course does not include such things as emotions of angst, because if these are arising, it is because peace is absent. (there is resistance) It is possible to direct our focus away from the fear towards the calm center within, however, so long as the fear is still arising, it's quite evident that our identification with the peace is not abiding and is not all encompassing....we're still identifying with a limiting thought and holding it to be true. The moment the identification with peace becomes all encompassing, the fear will cease to be. Fear indicates resistance to what is. Where there is resistance, there is not abiding peace. As our alignment with peace expands, the fear loses its grip and begins to dissipate and if that peace becomes abiding and all encompassing, the fear will disappear. I recently checked out Author Byron Katie (as was suggested a ways back by someone on the Pavlina forum) and was blown away by how much her experiences and summations mirror my own. I generally avoid the teachings of other 'gurus' as long ago I made a decision to follow my own path to clarity. I had come to see that anything I required lay within and found that sometimes the teachings of others took my mind off on a tangent that took me away from my own instincts. However, there are times where there is such resonance that I'll embrace a certain teacher or teachings and this is the case here. NOt sure how familiar you are with her stuff but she really does a wonderful job of explaining how in the absence of resistance, joy becomes the norm. |
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Post by question on May 22, 2012 13:46:53 GMT -5
Question re: enigma: "it is impossible to have a useful conversation with him." Read more: spiritualteachers.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=misc&action=display&thread=2178&page=3#ixzz1vcaSXsyxPerhaps your definition of "useful" is the issue? From my perspective I've had useful conversations. Clarifications about what different ideas and pointers mean, for example. Question, what is the "useful" element that you find missing in your conversations with enigma? What exactly are you looking for that you find him inadequately addressing? I guess if you accept his assumptions then you will find it useful how he is able to wiggle his way around the problems they create. But the thing is that he never actually transcends these assumptions. You end up doing intellectual acrobatics, solving his problems (which you accepted to be existent) and not yours. Recently we have been discussing the assumption that all experience is dualistic. Upon this assumption Enigma builds a complex teaching. When the student tries to apply this teaching he is perplexed, because it's not compatible with his actual experience, but the intuition/assumption is believed so strongly that the student ends up in the toilet. We have shown that actually experience isn't dualistic at all, to see this at once eradicates all the artificial problems which E convinces people to deal with. What I would consider useful in our talks is honesty and a willingness to question one's own assumptions. Enigma isn't doing that. Andrew is clearly seeing what Enigma is doing. Enigma isn't seeing what Andrew is doing, he is reading Andrew's words alright but he doesn't understand, instead he ridicules it by instead talking about infinate bliss buckets and one-ended sticks. People have a useful conversation when they listen and try to understand each other. A conversation is useless when even after 50 pages of text someone is completely refusing to hear and understand what the other is saying. |
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Post by figgy on May 22, 2012 13:48:52 GMT -5
Here's the thing E. I could quite happily talk about an absence of judgement, or absence of attachment, or resistance, of self-image, or conditioned fear....but an absence of these things does not lead to a special enlightened state. An absence of these things leads to more joy, peace, love, lightness, happiness, ease and grace. What I see you doing is describing an 'absence' of some kind as some kind of enlightened state, but there is no enlightened state. When we talk of non-abidance, its not a state, its a way of experiencing which enables us to experience more grace, flow and ease. The reason seekers seek is because they know what is good and they want more of what is good. A trap that many fall into, partly because of dodgy pointing, is thinking there is something better than lightness, ease, grace, joy and peace. Nail on the head here, my friend. You've stated this so well....... something I've been trying to put into words for a while now.  It is indeed interesting how Those who poo-poo joy and bliss are most often those who experience very little of it themselves, and yet, many of these are folks who claim to be 'awake'..... seeing with clarity...no longer believing thoughts, etc...so there's a bit of a conundrum for them in explaining how it is that they no longer believe their thoughts or identify with a 'person' but yet, still experience emotional angst regularly.  And often, IN the absence of an actual life experience brimming with joy, they do precisely what you've described; fall into a trap of believing in the existence of something BETTER than joy, lightness, grace, peace, as though an experience of joy, ease and flow is somehow 'beneath' them. |
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Post by lemongrass on May 22, 2012 15:38:23 GMT -5
Here's the thing E. I could quite happily talk about an absence of judgement, or absence of attachment, or resistance, of self-image, or conditioned fear....but an absence of these things does not lead to a special enlightened state. An absence of these things leads to more joy, peace, love, lightness, happiness, ease and grace. What I see you doing is describing an 'absence' of some kind as some kind of enlightened state, but there is no enlightened state. When we talk of non-abidance, its not a state, its a way of experiencing which enables us to experience more grace, flow and ease. The reason seekers seek is because they know what is good and they want more of what is good. A trap that many fall into, partly because of dodgy pointing, is thinking there is something better than lightness, ease, grace, joy and peace. Nail on the head here, my friend. You've stated this so well....... something I've been trying to put into words for a while now. It is indeed interesting how Those who poo-poo joy and bliss are most often those who experience very little of it themselves, and yet, many of these are folks who claim to be 'awake'..... seeing with clarity...no longer believing thoughts, etc...so there's a bit of a conundrum for them in explaining how it is that they no longer believe their thoughts or identify with a 'person' but yet, still experience emotional angst regularly. And often, IN the absence of an actual life experience brimming with joy, they do precisely what you've described; fall into a trap of believing in the existence of something BETTER than joy, lightness, grace, peace, as though an experience of joy, ease and flow is somehow 'beneath' them. That or they don't really value joy, lightness, grace, peace, etc. That or they feel like trolling whoever believes others should be feeling joy, lightness, grace, peace, etc. That or they are testing others' abidance in joy, lightness, grace, peace, etc. That or there is no trap and no test because there is nothing to obtain. |
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Post by andrew on May 22, 2012 16:02:40 GMT -5
Here's the thing E. I could quite happily talk about an absence of judgement, or absence of attachment, or resistance, of self-image, or conditioned fear....but an absence of these things does not lead to a special enlightened state. An absence of these things leads to more joy, peace, love, lightness, happiness, ease and grace. What I see you doing is describing an 'absence' of some kind as some kind of enlightened state, but there is no enlightened state. When we talk of non-abidance, its not a state, its a way of experiencing which enables us to experience more grace, flow and ease. The reason seekers seek is because they know what is good and they want more of what is good. A trap that many fall into, partly because of dodgy pointing, is thinking there is something better than lightness, ease, grace, joy and peace. Nail on the head here, my friend. You've stated this so well....... something I've been trying to put into words for a while now. It is indeed interesting how Those who poo-poo joy and bliss are most often those who experience very little of it themselves, and yet, many of these are folks who claim to be 'awake'..... seeing with clarity...no longer believing thoughts, etc...so there's a bit of a conundrum for them in explaining how it is that they no longer believe their thoughts or identify with a 'person' but yet, still experience emotional angst regularly. And often, IN the absence of an actual life experience brimming with joy, they do precisely what you've described; fall into a trap of believing in the existence of something BETTER than joy, lightness, grace, peace, as though an experience of joy, ease and flow is somehow 'beneath' them. Yes. I fell into a similar trap myself several years ago. Its a very strange thing really, because I thought I was present and at peace but I really wasn't. That says it all really - 'I was literally THINKING I was present and at peace'! |
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Post by figgy on May 22, 2012 16:33:44 GMT -5
That or they don't really value joy, lightness, grace, peace, etc. I'd say in this case, they are simply in denial.  All humans naturally gravitate towards feeling good. While actual definitions of precise states will indeed vary, by the very nature of the way we're wired, we move towards things we resonate with and away from those things we do not. Perhaps.....but no one here is saying that anyone 'should' or 'should not' feel anything in particular. To speak of joy and the possibility of it's abundance is not the same as saying that it 'should' be experienced or that there is anything particularly 'wrong' about emotions of angst arising if in fact they are. It's not 'wrong' to experience resistance nor is it wrong to experience suffering, but life is more enjoyable in both of absences. That could be..... ;D And ultimately there is nothing that 'needs' to be obtained and the realization of this is indeed a fast track to loads of joy.  |
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Post by Portto on May 22, 2012 17:44:39 GMT -5
I'd say in this case, they are simply in denial. All humans naturally gravitate towards feeling good. While actual definitions of precise states will indeed vary, by the very nature of the way we're wired, we move towards things we resonate with and away from those things we do not. You're not human. You're THIS. You don't move, you're not wired, you don't resonate. You see joy and you're it... You see many things and you seem to become them... |
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Post by enigma on May 22, 2012 19:11:32 GMT -5
Here's the thing E. I could quite happily talk about an absence of judgement, or absence of attachment, or resistance, of self-image, or conditioned fear....but an absence of these things does not lead to a special enlightened state. I've never referred to a special anything, I've repeatedly said that it is NOT a state, I've said that enlightenment is a misconception, and I rarely use the word, and I HAVE referred to it as an absence. As usual, you're arguing with yourself. |
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Because its message is the crux of what Andrew and I are attempting to explain.
As we've been through before, I am very much speaking here from my own experience and attempting to share with others that living a life of abundant joy is not some 'special' or amazing attainment but instead something that occurs naturally when we are free from resistance and accepting of all that appears.
