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

[Wind]

Posted by Valerie Villars (here)
I love Jim Carrey. The Truman Show. We are all living it.

In many ways we indeed are living in it.

[greybeard]

Know your life purpose in 7 minutes | Neale Donald Walsch | Motivational Video |Reminder who you are

Conversations with God has come a long way

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YQIBIW6eT8I

[Wind]

No one has the power to make you unhappy or miserable.
Mainly, we do this by ourselves.
Happiness is our real nature.
Sadness comes mostly through habit
and through identification with the personal self.
We can be happy every moment but mostly, due to habit,
we choose to focus on what makes us unhappy
and so lose or hide our natural joy.
Develop the excellent attitude of gratitude to all of existence.
Overlook petty thoughts, worries and troubles
—the bitter and the sweet.
Instantly, you will begin feeling uplifted in your spirit
and in a short time you will begin seeing life
through brighter, wiser and more loving eyes.
Start today.

~ Mooji

[Wind]

[greybeard]

For sure Mooji and Ramana are coming from the same place.
Thanks for the ongoing poss Wind--much appreciated

Much love
Chris

[O Donna]

It is not for me to decide if enlightened or not.

I'd like to share a experience with enlightenment through imagery. Enlightenment (as I understand it) is like the rarest of gem that when I go to explain it to myself and especially others I see it disintegrate right before my eyes. It's 'there' but senses see it degenerate leaving me wondering and searching for words.

I can imagine it being like knowing one is in a dream and trying to bring like a lamp stick from the dream world into reality. It all disappears along with the rest of the 'physical' things in dreamworld upon waking.

I don't know if this is a thread to share such thoughts but there it is.

I have such a wonderful thing to share but it doesn't come out as beautiful as the beauty it truly is. I think, maybe next time....

[greybeard]

O Donna
Thanks for your post.
Feel free to continue to share your experiences.

Chris

[O Donna]

Whatever is not yours, let go of it.
Your letting go of it will be
for your long-term welfare & happiness.

-Buddha


I find the above quote useful.

[O Donna]

An insight I just had about the quote I just posted. I reread the quote and thought, why do I have such a hard time with the words 'let go', I feel they shouldn't but they do. The words confuse me and then an idea inserted suggesting 'put aside' instead of 'let go'.

Goes like this

Whatever is not yours, put it aside.
Your putting it aside will be
for your long-term welfare & happiness.

Any opinion as to whether it leaves the spirit of the Buddha message intact or not?

What I get as an interpretation was that the Buddha was hinting at the true nature of things/ putting things in perspective.

[greybeard]

One way of looking at it is that ownership is at best temporary--its a concept.
All concepts to be released to reveal truth.
Truth not being a thought or an opinion.
One definition of enlightenment is.
There is no longer an identification with the story of me--hence the statement--On enlightenment there is no one left to claim enlightenment--the illusion of a separate person has gone.

One more thought on the Buddha quote is the saying "That which brings you pleasure will bring you pain" Different sides of the same coin.


My disclaimer is that any post of mine is not necessarily true--its a may be so.

Love Chris

[onevoice]

Posted by O Donna (here)
An insight I just had about the quote I just posted. I reread the quote and thought, why do I have such a hard time with the words 'let go', I feel they shouldn't but they do. The words confuse me and then an idea inserted suggesting 'put aside' instead of 'let go'.

Goes like this

Whatever is not yours, put it aside.
Your putting it aside will be
for your long-term welfare & happiness.

Any opinion as to whether it leaves the spirit of the Buddha message intact or not?

What I get as an interpretation was that the Buddha was hinting at the true nature of things/ putting things in perspective.

Hi O Donna. Your interpretation of the Buddha's message quite certainly does detract from the original intent of the Buddha. When Buddha advised to "let go" that is precisely what he meant. Our sense of self arises from the 7 consciousness that we have (we have 8 consciousness according to the Buddha). These are the eight consciousnesses we have:

1. eye consciousness
2. ear consciousness
3. nose consciousness
4. tongue consciousness
5. body consciousness
6. mental consciousness
7. deluded awareness
8. All encompassing consciousness

The first 5 consciousnesses are associated with the five sensory organs we have. The 5th consciousness of the body processes the sense of touch and other physical sensations of the body. The first 5 consciousness forms the outer layers of our consciousness that we use to interface with our environment. Picture 5 segmented outer ring. The 6th consciousness are associated with the ordinary thinking mind that we use every day in our every day thought, speech and actions. It is the aggregator of the lower 5 consciousness. The 6th consciousness forms the next inner ring of consciousness. The 7th consciousness is the foundation/source of our ego. It is the consciousness of the self -- it exists to always try to preserve oneself above the needs of the others. The 7th consciousness forms the next inner ring. The 8th consciousness it the "permanent" memory, what is usually referred to as soul in western metaphysical teaching. It stores all of the experiences and memories of all our past lives. It also serves as the seed for our next life, if you haven't become enlightened and choose to reincarnate. The 8th consciousness forms the central core of our consciousness.

So for most of us, letting go of things in our life that we hold dear is very difficult. Our memories of past enjoyable experiences as well as the ones we like to forget, we continue to hold onto. These are commonly referred to as attachments. Holding onto both pleasurable and not so pleasurable experiences both causes us to suffer.
We also have goals and status that we are striving for and obtain - such as wealth, fame, recognition, etc. These are commonly referred to as grasping. Together, all of our attachments and graspings forms the foundation of the sense of our self.

We can easily see that when we remember the past painful experiences, we suffer. What is not so obvious is that when we reminisce about pleasurable moments of our past, we long for it, so we create a sort of "void" in our consciousness. Also we want pleasurable experiences to last, so we sometimes do self-serving things to maintain this.

My Chinese Chan Master told me there are three basic steps to enlightenment:

1. Let go of all attachments
2. Let go of all graspings
3. Let go of self

The first two are very difficult but may be doable. The last one is the hardest one. There are many levels of letting the self go as well. One of the most advanced method my Master taught is the "Silent Illumination" - wherein the primary process is just letting go of whatever thoughts and experiences we sense during the meditation. I hope this has help to shed some light on the meaning of "letting go". It is like when we have something in our hand, just open the hand and let it go. This way, the hand (mind) is empty and open to infinite possibilities. When we try to do other actions such as "putting it aside" we are involving the ego as the ego is deciding to put it aside for later consideration.

[O Donna]

Very helpful, thanks much!!

Isn't there also the illusion of letting go? Is there such a thing as letting go of letting go?

Letting go implies there is something to let go of.

It is like something placed in our grasps at birth, holding it the entire life only to loosen the grasp to find that all this time there was nothing in the grasp. A magic trick if you will.

[greybeard]

Posted by O Donna (here)
Very helpful, thanks much!!

Isn't there also the illusion of letting go? Is there such a thing as letting go of letting go?

Letting go implies there is something to let go of.

It is like something placed in our grasps at birth, holding it the entire life only to loosen the grasp to find that all this time there was nothing in the grasp. A magic trick if you will.

Yes O Donna
Its all levels and what seems true and is appropriate at one is no so in another.
If you want absolute Truth--nothing ever happened --no Creation no Dissolution--- Thats according to Ramana Maharshi and Nasargadatta.
But its not helpful for most with the every day vicissitudes.

So there is no letting go--no free will. (at that level)
Nothing t0 let go of --no subject nor object--one consciousness.
One without a second.
You are not the doer.

Acts happen deeds are done but there is no doer thereof

Christ quote " Of myself I do nothing , it is the Father within"

Tim's thread has the best explanation of enlightenment--from my perspective.

Hope this helps--not that there is a you to need it--smiling
Chris

https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...l=1#post456904

[Wind]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=R3tYb3HDR90

[O Donna]

Posted by Wind (here)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=R3tYb3HDR90

Wow. After hearing Mooji I felt like he is like a relative in the sense of harmony while listening to him in just the first 2 minutes.

I can just picture him at a fireside chat speaking with everyone as equals sharing as they do in return.

[Wind]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cMDSrcOOz3I

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=uWuMN1N1pqs

[Wind]

Mooji - An invitation to freedom Part 1/2 London Real

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=1oD0aSGwUYQ

Full video can be viewed here.

[Wind]

"It is true that every happening in the outer life can be accepted as being good for the inner life, that the most calamitous situation can be taken as God's will for us. But it is also true that unless we ask--and correctly answer--in what sense it is good and why it is God's will, we may fail to seek out and strive to correct the fault in us which makes it good and providential. For each situation presents not only the need and opportunity of recognizing a higher power at work in our life, but also a problem in self-examination and self-improvement."

"The region of real power, real knowledge, is not in duality, not in the contrast of good and evil, light and dark, but in THAT which transcends them. Can we gain access to it?"

"We live in the Real--all of us--but only few know it."
"This is a paradox of existence: that the Real is beyond the illusory and yet the illusory is derived from the Real."

"Grace is here for all. It cannot be here for one special person and not for another. Only we do not know how to open our tensioned hands and receive it, how to open our ego-tight hearts and let it gently enter."

~ Paul Brunton

[greybeard]

Adyashanti best video (and I've watched many). It's about no self

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

[greybeard]

There is No Choice in Eternity

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=uXiD89R71WY

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6maAy9ZwtJc

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