Pretty concrete stuff. Not all these heady hairsplitting and breaking things up into pieces with competing mental acts. yeah, well, I keep getting the sense that chopping wood and carrying water would be a hell of lot better in your system. You are breaking off a part of your posited oneness and using it to justify actions that involving breaking up this oneness and above getting into disagreements with swarm - who it seems has a similar philosophy. I can't see how this will help end suffering if you are correct about its origins. But I'll leave it at that. Somehow I hoped you would at least find what you were doing funny even if you still felt it was good to disagree with swarm and tell him about oneness. But without a shared sense of irony..... take care. I'll leave you to swarm. It's a good name, it's a set of 'things' and it is a verb. So I mean it both ways.
That is an assumption which is not always true. If it means nothing to you personally, just file it away. There are people for whom it means something and if you explore your consciousness to its limits, it will come to mean something to you as well. There are various ways in which meditation, hypnosis and other techniques can result in states where you might be tempted to ignore that advice. My recommendation is: Always treat the reality you find yourself in as real. Always do non destructive reality testing. I’m not posing this as a theoretical matter. It is pragmatic advice. Simple when testing your assumptions about reality like: I can fly, I’m invulnerable, I can pass through solid objects, I’m god, etc.; do not use a means which is destructive like: jumping in front of a car, jumping off the roof, running full force into a brick wall, destroying the universe. Instead choose non destructive tests like: poking yourself with a needle, jumping up from the ground, resting your hand on the wall and trying to push through, leaving the universe alone. You have good focus, but there is more to life than just leading to enlightenment.
Enlightenment is more than one thing; if you're enlightened about your personal state of enlightenment. then you're aware that you aren't really enlightened (yet). If you are truly enlightened (whatever that means), then you aren't especially aware of it, because you don't need to be, just like you don't need to be aware that oxygen goes into your lungs when you draw a breath. You still get the oxygen - even if you don't know what oxygen is. It's not an arrival, it's a journey.
Vkothii: It's not an arrival, it's a journey. 'Enlightenment' may appear to be a journey but once it is 'reached' there is knowing that it has always been so, that there is nothing other than enlightenment. Enlightenment is a re-cognition of your true essence ('re' because it is already something that is always there that you come to cognize). You do not become aware of it, it is the awareness. Does that awareness you have have any parts? Can you say 'I am not aware'? No, that awareness must be there for you to even say 'I am not aware'. That awareness is what you come to identify with or that you come to re-cognize as your true essence. That awareness that is always and ever there is missed - it is like the wind that cannot be grasped or known except for by the rustling leaf or moving flag on a pole etc. What you have written is very confusing and confused. If you are really interested in what is being pointed at in teaching on enlightenment then check out the free podcasts on urbangurucafe.com. The 'teachers' on there won't lead you astray and they tell you right from the start, 'You are already what you seek. You need no practices and it takes no time. In fact, it is only 'now' that you can see this. Any thoughts of gaining something in the future is taking you away from re-cognizing your true nature because the thoughts of the mind are masking what is already there.'
'Enlightenment' may appear to be a journey but once it is 'reached' there is knowing that it has always been so, that there is nothing other than enlightenment. Enlightenment is a re-cognition of your true essence ('re' because it is already something that is always there that you come to cognize). You do not become aware of it, it is the awareness. Does that awareness you have have any parts? Can you say 'I am not aware'? No, that awareness must be there for you to even say 'I am not aware'. That awareness is what you come to identify with or that you come to re-cognize as your true essence. That awareness that is always and ever there is missed - it is like the wind that cannot be grasped or known except for by the rustling leaf or moving flag on a pole etc. What you have written is very confusing and confused. If you are really interested in what is being pointed at in teaching on enlightenment then check out the free podcasts on urbangurucafe.com. The 'teachers' on there won't lead you astray and they tell you right from the start, 'You are already what you seek. You need no practices and it takes no time. In fact, it is only 'now' that you can see this. Any thoughts of gaining something in the future is taking you away from re-cognizing your true nature because the thoughts of the mind are masking what is already there.'[/QUOTE]
This sounds like you are repeating another’s words. The funny thing about it is something said by one who is speaking from their own realization doesn’t work right repeated by someone who is not also speaking from their own realization. There is a certain je ne sais pas which is lost.
Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. It depends on why it does not work right. If it doesn't work right because you are clearer than the other person, then that 'I do not know' (because it does not ring a bell) is legitimate. Then you have to trust with what rings true for you. But if it is 'lost' because you are totally engaged in a story of time and it's got to be my way or the highway - then you need to try harder to understand. Be more earnest and sincere and ask to have it explained. Or, you can just stop and smell a rose or admire that beautiful flower.
