Enlightenment: The Ego, what is it? How to transcend it.

[joeecho]

Language alludes to the truth, one just has to figure out how it is doing it. That is why there is truth within a lie. There might be an attempt to throw off the scent by some means but the scent is always there. One simply needs to develop a 'knows' to sniff it out.

I don't know what difference my posts make for anyone, that is for them to sniff out for themselves.

I remember reading spiritual favored books, music and the like when I was young and thinking a lot of it made little sense to me, now I know where they were coming from so I have to assume that there are people that read what I write and think the same thing. Perspective never ceases to both entertain and inform. It's one of the best lessons I've learned in life and still learn from, especially when I forget it's significance in the world of experience.

[greybeard]

I have no answers and few questions if any now.
Sometimes I wonder why I am still posting on this thread.
After all I have been saying much the same thing for years here.
I have tried to stop many time and then something fires my attention and I want to share it.
Its not an addiction or compulsion to post--it just happens--I know not why.

I agree with you Joe --all things point---to what though?
My take is, to nothing--the great emptiness, full of potential.

C

[greybeard]

Rupert Sheldrake - Sun's Consciousness & Divine Universe

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zle7zMUi1h0

Alan Watts - Being God Q&A Session

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mmX8HZuhNXE

[Clear Light]

Oh, I hope no-one minds (lol, pun intended) if I add a little something to this thread from Nisargadatta Maharaj's “I am That” which I feel seem to be more "Buddhist" than "Advaita Vedantian" ?

[Page 200] "The ‘I am’ is a thought, while awareness is not a thought; there is no ‘I am aware’ in awareness. Consciousness is an attribute while awareness is not, one can be aware of being conscious, but not conscious of awareness. God is the totality of consciousness, but awareness is beyond all – being as well as non-being"

[Page 224] "All hangs on the idea ‘I am’. Examine it very thoroughly. It lies at the root of every trouble. This ‘I am’ idea was not born with you. You could have lived very well without it. It came later due to your self-identification with the body. It created an illusion of separation where there was none. It made you a stranger in your own world alien and inimical. Without the sense of ‘I am’ life goes on. There are moments when we are without the sense of ‘I am’, at peace and happy. With the return of ‘I am’, trouble starts"

[Page 224] "It is because the ‘I am’ is false that it wants to continue. Reality need not continue – knowing itself indestructible, it is indifferent to the destruction of forms and expressions. To strengthen and stabilize the ‘I am’ we do all sorts of things – all in vain for the ‘I am’ is being rebuilt from moment to moment. No ambition is spiritual. All ambitions are for the sake of ‘I am’. If you want to make real progress you must give up all ideas of personal attainment"

[Page 269] "Immortality is freedom from the feeling: ‘I am’. Yet it is not extinction. On the contrary, it is a state infinitely more real, aware and happy than you can possibly think of. Only self-consciousness is no more. Who would remain even to say ‘I am the witness’ ? When there is no ‘I am’, where is the witness ? In the timeless state there is no self to take refuge in"

Now ... perhaps this may help to illumine from a slightly different angle for all those who are interested in such matters eh ?

[greybeard]

Nisargadatta was not that happy with THAT book as it was a transcript of answers to individuals questions and aimed at that person only.
Stephen Wolinsky explains fully in the the three videos and others that I posted some time back.

It has to do with where the person addressed is "nesting" the idea being to move that one on to the next "level" then on again--each level (nest) seeming to be relatively real.

What gets me in a way, though explained by by Mooj,i is free will.
You have it till you are happy with the realization that there is no free will.

It takes subject and object to express free will.

(If) You dont exist as an individual--only one substance, yet the Guru gives you things to do to find the Self within.
If you are not the doer why give "you" things to seem to do when you do nothing --- laughing hysterically.

You have freewill within the play BUT you and the play are a mirage---nothing is real, nothing separate, nothing happened, no creation no dissolution.
So they, the Mystics say, at least Nisargadatta and Ramana Maharshi do.
Nisargadatta was suggesting find out what you are not--Neity neity.

All beyond the mind to understand>
Ch

[Clear Light]

Posted by greybeard (here)
Nisargadatta was not that happy with THAT book as it was a transcript of answers to individuals questions and aimed at that person only.
Stephen Wolinsky explains fully in the the three videos and others that I posted some time back.

It has to do with where the person addressed is "nesting" the idea being to move that one on to the next "level" then on again--each level (nest) seeming to be relatively real

Oh, it may be that Nis would have preferred that "conversation" had not seen the light of day in print, however I find it quite illuminating in that he most probably would have had to answer questions from some who were already grappling with Buddhist concepts and theories in their "search for enlightenment" eh ?

So, how to deconstruct their ideas unless you have already done so yourself eh ?

[greybeard]

Posted by Clear Light (here)

Posted by greybeard (here)
Nisargadatta was not that happy with THAT book as it was a transcript of answers to individuals questions and aimed at that person only.
Stephen Wolinsky explains fully in the the three videos and others that I posted some time back.

It has to do with where the person addressed is "nesting" the idea being to move that one on to the next "level" then on again--each level (nest) seeming to be relatively real

Oh, it may be that Nis would have preferred that "conversation" had not seen the light of day in print, however I find it quite illuminating in that he most probably would have had to answer questions from some who were already grappling with Buddhist concepts and theories in their "search for enlightenment" eh ?

So, how to deconstruct their ideas unless you have already done so yourself eh ?

Yes but!!
He said that he had not read books --everything he said came from personal "experience"
He was out to destroy all concepts So whatever was said to him he would say " That not it"
Anything that you can perceive or conceive, is not it

He did not have to deconstruction anything "personally" all he had to do was tell others to stay in the "I am" and in order to find out who you are, you had to first find out what you are not, hence Neity neity.

None of this my personal experience just getting--I hope--the essence of what Stephen Wolinsky was saying..
I think Stephen steers a straight and understandable course through the paradoxes.
Ch

[Clear Light]

Posted by greybeard (here)

Posted by Clear Light (here)

Posted by greybeard (here)
Nisargadatta was not that happy with THAT book as it was a transcript of answers to individuals questions and aimed at that person only.
Stephen Wolinsky explains fully in the the three videos and others that I posted some time back.

It has to do with where the person addressed is "nesting" the idea being to move that one on to the next "level" then on again--each level (nest) seeming to be relatively real

Oh, it may be that Nis would have preferred that "conversation" had not seen the light of day in print, however I find it quite illuminating in that he most probably would have had to answer questions from some who were already grappling with Buddhist concepts and theories in their "search for enlightenment" eh ?

So, how to deconstruct their ideas unless you have already done so yourself eh ?

Yes but!!
He said that he had not read books --everything he said came from personal "experience"
He was out to destroy all concepts So whatever was said to him he would say " That not it"
Anything that you can perceive or conceive, is not it

He did not have to deconstruction anything "personally" all he had to do was tell others to stay in the "I am" and in order to find out who you are, you had to first find out what you are not, hence Neity neity.

None of this my personal experience just getting--I hope--the essence of what Stephen Wolinsky was saying..
I think Stephen steers a straight and understandable course through the paradoxes.
Ch

Oh, perhaps until such time as its unreality is made self-evident ?

Or, in other words, the (false) one who is searching has a moment of clarity and is directly exposed to its utter lack of inherent substance aka "Emptiness" (though not nothingness) eh ?

[greybeard]

Cant say as this one is searching--given up on that.
Im into what works Lol
Just passing time my friend.

ch

[betoobig]

Today i found him, love it

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=wC2W5kK7ZBg

Sorry if it been posted allready.
Much love

[Clear Light]

Posted by greybeard (here)
Cant say as this one is searching--given up on that.
Im into what works Lol
Just passing time my friend.

ch

"Time" ... "What time ?" he says laughing

[greybeard]

Alan Watts - Being God Q&A Session

Though I would bump this as it is amusing yet full of valid information from the perspective of "God realized"--thats the same as Self Realization

Ch.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mmX8HZuhNXE

[greybeard]

Alan Watts Interviews God (I recommend this one, it's a very interesting lecture)

Published on Jan 1, 2015

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 -- 16 November 1973) was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopal priest but left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.
Living on the West Coast, Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley. Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy and not just a religion. Like Aldous Huxley before him, he explored human consciousness in the essay, "The New Alchemy" (1958), and in the book, The Joyous Cosmology (1962).
Towards the end of his life, he divided his time between a houseboat in Sausalito and a cabin on Mount Tamalpais. His legacy has been kept alive by his son, Mark Watts, and by many of his recorded talks and lectures that have found new life on the Internet. Critic Erik Davis notes the freshness, longevity, and continuing relevance of Watts's work today, observing that his "writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity."

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=1AaRZnnKt4w

[joeecho]

Alan Watts, an interesting cats. Books could begin with a single sentence we writes or utters.

[greybeard]

Posted by joeecho (here)
Alan Watts, an interesting cats. Books could begin with a single sentence we writes or utters.

Hi Joe
He has a way of pointing that is unique but the moon is still the moon ----laughing.
Different finger pointing is all.

However he has a clarity that some teachers don't have.
I think it is great to cross check info.

Ch

[joeecho]

Posted by greybeard (here)

Posted by joeecho (here)
Alan Watts, an interesting cats. Books could begin with a single sentence we writes or utters.

Hi Joe
He has a way of pointing that is unique but the moon is still the moon ----laughing.
Different finger pointing is all.

However he has a clarity that some teachers don't have.
I think it is great to cross check info.

Ch

Oh, ALWAYS! That goes without saying.

I could have agreed without saying but where is the fun in that?

On a separate note, what if the big bang was just a cosmic child playing with his toy cannon?



Just kitten.

[greybeard]

I used to wonder if God was just a kid playing with matches.

If I knew a little of the little I know--I would know----- Nothing.

There was "Nothing" before the big bang--everything comes out of That.

Ch

[joeecho]

Posted by greybeard (here)
I used to wonder if God was just a kid playing with matches.

If I knew a little of the little I know--I would know----- Nothing.

There was nothing before the big bang--everything comes out of That.

Ch

It's all play if not why all the room? The big bang is just an attempt to explain why the room appears to still be expanding.

Do I need another room to step out of it? Apparently the other room is a room of One, no play there.

[greybeard]

James Eaton - Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview

Whilst growing up James had a deep sense that something about life didn’t add up. Unsure about what exactly that something was he tried to ‘fit in’ and graduated in Maths from Oxford University. It didn’t work.

He then began seeking a resolution to a lingering sense of unfulfillment by writing songs, singing and playing in bands, then as an actor, then as a school teacher, but that didn’t work either.

On recognising that no matter what his outer circumstances were the feeling of longing and dissatisfaction still remained, the nature of seeking turned inward and James found himself following a variety of spiritual and therapeutic paths. Despite providing many insights along the way these too ultimately failed to satisfy. He felt drawn more and more to the question that no one seemed to be asking: “Who is doing all this?”

Finally James came across the Non-Dual message with which there was an instant resonance. He met with many different teachers and seeking came to an end when the true nature of reality was clearly seen.

James now holds meetings and retreats in the UK and abroad, and lives in Totnes with his partner and two sons.

Website: http://jameseaton.org

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=O9vwVs100mA

[ZooLife]

That last video you posted, Chris, is shown as 'Private' on YouTube.