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

[Shadowman]

Posted by Wind (here)
Ramana Maharshi says,
‘The ‘I’ removes the ‘I’ yet remains the ‘I’.’
It means the I-consciousness-presence
removes the I-person belief and thereafter remains
the unmixed and impersonal I-consciousness.
This is the paradox of Self-realisation.
This ‘I’ that removes the I-person
does not even have to touch the I-ego.
When a lion enters a room, he doesn't ask those there
to pack their things and leave.
There is only emptiness remaining.
Such is the power of true understanding.

~ Mooji

Yes, exactly. As Chris pointed out there are many ways of expressing the absolute,
however the tools of language/relativity/mind pale in comparison to the direct
awakening to the "Lion's Presence."

During an extended Satori the first term that came to mind was the American Indian
term Nagual - as in the unconditioned Absolute Reality. Hence my plagiarism of the
cover of Castaneda's book The Power of Silence for my Avatar image.

Ken Carey's book The Starseed Transmission's, or at least it's source, eloquently explains
the natural oscillation between the relative/Tonal/manifest and the absolute/Nagual/unmanifest.

It may also remind those whom are likely interested in most matters discussed in this forum
of the nature of their mission/contribution/service during the fast approaching, or if you prefer, increasingly
apparent wild ride of global awakening - and disclosure of "cognitive dissonance inducing" information
for the unprepared.

Our "fall" or "original sin" came about as focus of attention shifted from identification
with the Eternal Self to temporal forms exclusively. The paradox is that both the dreaming
subjective self as well as the dreams objective contents are actually illusions.

The return "journey" therefore requires a shift of focus back to Pure Awareness, to "repent"
(greek -> metanoia -> return to the Source) or to stop "sinning" (greek -> hemartia -> missing
the "point/centre/plenary reality")

I am <that, I am

"Be" <as you are - Ramana

Sammasati

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=k...DMjN8ge_xJ_IDQ

http://www.osho.com/iosho/library/re...dcb72dda8fe2e0

xxoo
tim

[O Donna]

Posted by tim (here)

Our "fall" or "original sin" came about as focus of attention shifted from identification
with the Eternal Self to temporal forms exclusively. The paradox is that both the dreaming
subjective self as well as the dreams objective contents are actually illusions.

Greetingss tim,

Direct communication with the divine never broken. The dream-mind perceives the divine through perception/ conception leaving it following shadows believed real. "Fall" / "original sin" sits squarely on the shoulders of temporal forms and all that follows it.

(All said in the spirit of a fireside fellowship of sharing)

[greybeard]

Good to see you visiting here Tim
Much love c

[greybeard]

over 800.000 visits and continuing at two thousand to this thread every week.
As Tim has pointed to there is an awakening going on .
Many times I have felt like retiring from this thread and get drawn back as there is perhaps a sense of responsibility to those that read the posts--view the videos.
Of my self I do nothing--there is an awareness of this

All credit to Wind who keeps this thread going.
His thread is going from strength to strength.

Much love to all who visit and partake here.

c

[Wind]

Glad to have been part of this journey, Chris. This thread is a gold mine for the soul.

[Foxie Loxie]

So glad you keep being "drawn back", greybeard.....Thank you, Wind, for this thread; it is, indeed, "soul food"!(To use a Southern American term)

[Catsquotl]

Felt right enough for sharing.

With Love
Eelco

Samādhi is capable of bringing much harm or much benefit to the meditator, you can't say it brings only one or the other. For one who has no wisdom it is harmful, but for one who has wisdom it can bring real benefit, it can lead to insight.

That which can possibly be harmful to the meditator is absorption samādhi (jhāna), the samādhi with deep, sustained calm. This samādhi brings great peace. Where there is peace, there is happiness. When there is happiness, attachment and clinging to that happiness arise. The meditator doesn't want to contemplate anything else, he just wants to indulge in that pleasant feeling. When we have been practising for a long time we may become adept at entering this samādhi very quickly. As soon as we start to note our meditation object, the mind enters calm, and we don't want to come out to investigate anything. We just get stuck on that happiness. This is a danger to one who is practising meditation.

We must use upacāra samādhi: Here, we enter calm and then, when the mind is sufficiently calm, we come out and look at outer activity. Looking at the outside with a calm mind gives rise to wisdom. This is hard to understand, because it's almost like ordinary thinking and imagining. When thinking is there, we may think the mind isn't peaceful, but actually that thinking is taking place within the calm. There is contemplation but it doesn't disturb the calm. We may bring thinking up in order to contemplate it. Here we take up the thinking to investigate it, it's not that we are aimlessly thinking or guessing away; it's something that arises from a peaceful mind. This is called 'awareness within calm and calm within awareness'. If it's simply ordinary thinking and imagining, the mind won't be peaceful, it will be disturbed. But I am not talking about ordinary thinking, this is a feeling that arises from the peaceful mind. It's called 'contemplation'. Wisdom is born right here.

So, there can be right samādhi and wrong samādhi. Wrong samādhi is where the mind enters calm and there's no awareness at all. One could sit for two hours or even all day but the mind doesn't know where it's been or what's happened. It doesn't know anything. There is calm, but that's all. It's like a well-sharpened knife which we don't bother to put to any use. This is a deluded type of calm, because there is not much self-awareness. The meditator may think he has reached the ultimate already, so he doesn't bother to look for anything else. Samādhi can be an enemy at this level. Wisdom cannot arise because there is no awareness of right and wrong.

With right samādhi, no matter what level of calm is reached, there is awareness. There is full mindfulness and clear comprehension. This is the samādhi which can give rise to wisdom, one cannot get lost in it. Practisers should understand this well. You can't do without this awareness, it must be present from beginning to end. This kind of samādhi has no danger.

You may wonder: where does the benefit arise, how does the wisdom arise, from samādhi? When right samādhi has been developed, wisdom has the chance to arise at all times. When the eye sees form, the ear hears sound, the nose smells odours, the tongue experiences taste, the body experiences touch or the mind experiences mental impressions - in all postures - the mind stays with full knowledge of the true nature of those sense impressions, it doesn't follow them.

When the mind has wisdom it doesn't 'pick and choose.' In any posture we are fully aware of the birth of happiness and unhappiness. We let go of both of these things, we don't cling. This is called right practice, which is present in all postures. These words 'all postures' do not refer only to bodily postures, they refer to the mind, which has mindfulness and clear comprehension of the truth at all times. When samādhi has been rightly developed, wisdom arises like this. This is called 'insight', knowledge of the truth.

There are two kinds of peace - the coarse and the refined. The peace which comes from samādhi is the coarse type. When the mind is peaceful there is happiness. The mind then takes this happiness to be peace. But happiness and unhappiness are becoming and birth. There is no escape from samsāra here because we still cling to them. So happiness is not peace, peace is not happiness.

The other type of peace is that which comes from wisdom. Here we don't confuse peace with happiness; we know the mind which contemplates and knows happiness and unhappiness as peace. The peace which arises from wisdom is not happiness, but is that which sees the truth of both happiness and unhappiness. Clinging to those states does not arise, the mind rises above them. This is the true goal of all Buddhist practice.

- Ajahn Chah

http://www.ajahnchah.org/book/Path_in_Harmony1.php

[onevoice]

Posted by Catsquotl (here)
Felt right enough for sharing.

With Love
Eelco

We must use upacāra samādhi: Here, we enter calm and then, when the mind is sufficiently calm, we come out and look at outer activity. Looking at the outside with a calm mind gives rise to wisdom. This is hard to understand, because it's almost like ordinary thinking and imagining. When thinking is there, we may think the mind isn't peaceful, but actually that thinking is taking place within the calm. There is contemplation but it doesn't disturb the calm. We may bring thinking up in order to contemplate it. Here we take up the thinking to investigate it, it's not that we are aimlessly thinking or guessing away; it's something that arises from a peaceful mind. This is called 'awareness within calm and calm within awareness'. If it's simply ordinary thinking and imagining, the mind won't be peaceful, it will be disturbed. But I am not talking about ordinary thinking, this is a feeling that arises from the peaceful mind. It's called 'contemplation'. Wisdom is born right here.

The upacāra samādhi is very much like the "Silent Illumination" method taught by my late Chan Master Sheng-Yen.

Using the "Silent Illumination" method one must first calm the mind, entering samādhi. Then one doesn't stay in samādhi, but keep observing the mind and have awareness of one's mind and the whole environment. The mind is not focused on any one thing. The mind in the peaceful state keeps observing the mind, letting go of any scattered thoughts that may arise. One is not attached to anything or repulsed by anything. One simply maintains awareness, illuminating the mind.

Master Sheng-Yen also admonished his disciples to not to be attached to the absorption samādhi. He also teaches that trying to just maintain absorption samādhi is an attachment without wisdom and we need to let go of this.

Love, onevoice

[Alanantic]

tim! We miss you! Long time no hear!

[greybeard]

Posted by Alanantic (here)
tim! We miss you! Long time no hear!

With Tim its a bit like job done, but good to see him---we certainly can do with more visits from him.--agreed !!!

Chris

Ps I have the greatest respect for Tim on re reading my post it seems a little flipant --thats my weird sense of humor.

To quote a good friend I said to him--"You must admit I have a sense of humor---his response-- (With a sad face)" No Chris, but your parents certainly had!!" I laughed.

I got it.
C

[Wind]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gixT6YZD5wg

[Catsquotl]

Posted by onevoice (here)
The upacāra samādhi is very much like the "Silent Illumination" method taught by my late Chan Master Sheng-Yen.

Using the "Silent Illumination" method one must first calm the mind, entering samādhi. Then one doesn't stay in samādhi, but keep observing the mind and have awareness of one's mind and the whole environment. The mind is not focused on any one thing. The mind in the peaceful state keeps observing the mind, letting go of any scattered thoughts that may arise. One is not attached to anything or repulsed by anything. One simply maintains awareness, illuminating the mind.

In the vipassana style I practice.(Ajahn Tong) Access concentration is considered enough as a base for insight.
In fact absorption is considered dangerous because of the pitfalls..

I am still unsure about it as in most Pali texts Jhana is considered a pleasant abiding as long as we are here on earth. That said without having hours a day to spend meditating deep Jhanic absorption seems near impossible anyhow,

With Love
Eelco

[Flash]

A Neuroscientist Explores the "Sanskrit Effect"

MRI scans show that memorizing ancient mantras increases the size of brain regions associated with cognitive function

I spent many years studying and translating Sanskrit, and became fascinated by its apparent impact on mind and memory. In India's ancient learning methods textual memorization is standard: traditional scholars, or pandits, master many different types of Sanskrit poetry and prose texts; and the tradition holds that exactly memorizing and reciting the ancient words and phrases, known as mantras, enhances both memory and thinking.

I had also noticed that the more Sanskrit I studied and translated, the better my verbal memory seemed to become. Fellow students and teachers often remarked on my ability to exactly repeat lecturers’ own sentences when asking them questions in class. Other translators of Sanskrit told me of similar cognitive shifts. So I was curious: was there actually a language-specific “Sanskrit effect” as claimed by the tradition?

What we discovered from the structural MRI scanning was remarkable. Numerous regions in the brains of the pandits were dramatically larger than those of controls, with over 10 percent more grey matter across both cerebral hemispheres, and substantial increases in cortical thickness. Although the exact cellular underpinnings of gray matter and cortical thickness measures are still under investigation, increases in these metrics consistently correlate with enhanced cognitive function.

Most interestingly for verbal memory was that the pandits' right hippocampus—a region of the brain that plays a vital role in both short and long-term memory—had more gray matter than controls across nearly 75 percent of this subcortical structure. Our brains have two hippocampi, one on the left and one on the right, and without them we cannot record any new information. Many memory functions are shared by the two hippocampi. The right is, however, more specialized for patterns, whether sound, spatial or visual, so the large gray matter increases we found in the pandits’ right hippocampus made sense:

accurate recitation requires highly precise sound pattern encoding and reproduction. The pandits also showed substantially thickening of right temporal cortex regions that are associated with speech prosody and voice identity.
...............

Does the pandits’ substantial increase in the gray matter of critical verbal memory organs mean they are less prone to devastating memory pathologies such as Alzheimer's? We don't know yet, though anecdotal reports from India's Ayurvedic doctors suggest this may be the case. If so, this raises the possibility that verbal memory “exercising‘ or training might help elderly people at risk of mild cognitive impairment retard or, even more radically, prevent its onset.

If so, the training might need to be exact. One day I was filming four senior pandit teachers demonstrating the different recitation speeds. Partway into one session all four suddenly stopped. “What’s wrong?‘ I asked. “One of us made a slight error," came the response. "I don’t mind," I said. "Yes, but we do," and they restarted the entire recitation from the beginning.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...nskrit-effect/

In other words, all those hours of meditation on one hand, and of chanting complex mantras on the other ands help your brain and your ability to think, by increasing the brain physical capacity.

OMmmmm

[Wind]

My life is infinitely broad.
I can be in the dance, yet I am absolutely still.
You are not a one-coloured rainbow,
you can be all of this.
I can go into hell itself and have chai with the devil.
We can hug, because we know
he must do his work and I must do mine.
All this is part of the dance of existence.
Nothing exists independent of the Supreme Power.
Everything you experience, even the difficult things in life,
are your teachers.
The one who realizes the Truth blesses everything.
How can I be overwhelmed by anything that happens?
That is only an idea.
You are the untouched One.
Do not be afraid.

~ Mooji

[betoobig]

enlightment: being in sync with the wholeness of what you are. Abraham-Hicks

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=3NHGkNVMqdU

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=u5DN9fUbsIs

Much love

[greybeard]

The knowing of our own being is infinite awareness - Rupert Spira
In this interview Rupert Spira answers questions related to realization, individual character, mistaken projections onto spiritual teachers and more. Some of the questions discussed are: Is personal development necessary for realization? and Does awareness need an individual mind to know itself? This interview is featured in the "Science and Nonduality Anthology Vol.4". From an early age Rupert was deeply interested in the nature of Reality. For twenty years he studied the teachings of Ouspensky, Krishnamurti, Rumi, Shankaracharya, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta and Robert Adams, until he met his teacher, Francis Lucille, twelve years ago. Francis introduced Rupert to the teaching of Jean Klein, Parmenides, Wei Wu Wei and Atmananda Krishnamenon and, more importantly, directly indicated to him the true nature of experience. Rupert’s first book is “The Transparency of Things”, subtitled “Contemplating the Nature of Experience”. His second book, Presence Volume I The Art of Peace and Happiness and Presence Volume II The Intimacy of All Experience has been currently released by Non-Duality Press. To learn more about Rupert Spira please visit: http://non-duality.rupertspira.com/

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

[shijo]

Great video Chris,i like this man.

[Wind]

Just sink into the ocean of Being.
Sit with this.

Use this life intelligently.
Be fully your Self.
Then your love can embrace the whole world,
and not just your family and friends.
You will no longer pick and choose,
and you will not judge.

The Truth is already inside you.
The personality is but a mask.
The Self alone is real.

May the seeds of pure understanding
come into full bloom within your Being.
So be it.

~ Mooji

[greybeard]

The Gradual Rewiring of the Body
Liberating the body from the feeling of being a separate entity


Rupert sometimes speaks of things that some teachers dont.
Mooji is very single minded--no surplus information--you are That--end of story more or less.

One of my teachers Dr Goels (Guruji) was awakened through the movement of Kundalini which changes and strengthens the nervous system in order to carry the higher energy of the enlightened.
Some say this happens before or after enlightenment--Adyashanti speaks of this.

Chris

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vGo8-mSb21Q

[greybeard]

To See the Whole, You Have to Become Nothing

Satsang with Mooji In this profound Satsang excerpt, Moojibaba leads us through the power of self-inquiry to clarify our true position. Discover yourself as the ultimate witness, who is not disturbed by any of the things perceived. “Don’t ask your mind to cooperate, just look. Out of seeming nothing, something begins to manifest in a way that resonates inside your heart. Stay with it. Quickly, it deepens into an attraction. An urge, a joy—stay with it. It is indescribable, inscrutable. It is not too much for you to bear. You manifested in form in order to discover this.” This video is an excerpt from the Satsang, “To See the Whole, You Have to Become Nothing” https://mooji.tv/online-retreat/febru... Lisbon Satsang Intensive, 24 February 2018

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BSfJNbp2fC4