Okay. I am not feeling better. I am just feeling.
A year and two months post an awakening shift of consciousness (in which suffering more or less collapsed into non-existence) I am reporting from the front lines less and less frequently.
Part of my sporadic reportage is there is nothing new to report. I can itemize my life as it unfolds in domestic, professional and creative areas—oh yeah, Huffington Post just added me as a regular blogger columnist, woo hoo or not.
But that is not the same as reporting this experience of abiding equanimity. That gets pretty boring….unless of course, the peace is somehow disturbed and thought-driven turbulence enters stage left.
Lately, the turbulence looks like logistics. Will I be able to pay the for a condo property I bought in pre-development two years ago, due to complete this June. Or will I (with my right now job-seeking husband) be able to secure a mortgage. Or will I be forfeiting my down payment, begging family members for a bridge loan, or just saying, WTF, I think I’ll live in India for awhile. (Okay, yeah, because the sub continent feels like a spiritually romantic way to embrace being poor.)
The thing is, I have been truly surprised to find myself waking up in the middle of the night lately (now and then) with this future concern rampaging through my mind. I watch it, like a rhino in a heated charge, and think: Wow, some part of me is not experiencing equanimity. Then I laugh. The part of me watching the part of me not being at peace, even, is not my real identity.
In the deliver me from the unreal to the real, I realize any concerns about how my mind is fretting or not, is a layer of the unreal. I remember coaching a woman a year ago through a mental angst period in her year-long abiding blissful awaking, reminding her that “Hey, the you that judges the suffering you, is not you.”
As Adyashanti has said, “In order to awaken, we must break out of the paradigm of always seeking to feel better.”
I’d add to that. In order to abide in our awakening, we might remember we are not any of the layers of mind, especially the layer that judges what is. As Krishnamurti is acclaimed to have confessed in his secret to inner peace: “I don’t mind what happens.” (Of course that begs the incessant non-duality question, who is the I that does not mind. Joel Birocco, this one is for you.)
It reminds me of the Russian dolls, nested in each other. Into infinite smallness, we can search for a real me. And finally realize we were far too large to fit in that doll all along because our infinity is spaciously so.
Paradox: It’s cramped in here. It’s vast.
Or something like that.
How are all my readers (whoever you are) doing on/in the Mayan New Year.
Yours, In Awareness
Lori Ann
PS: Did you know I’ve started a weekly 3-minute video blog? It’s free, fun and magical. Curious? Then subscribe here.
The Awakened Dreamer 
zenkitties
Hey Lori,
I can definitely relate to this. Where that one that wants to still perpetuate sticks around. I call him the “little nick” as he may sometimes throw his tantrums (I want that, but I can’t have it!) and can’t help but laugh at the fact that beyond that is always wellness.
Even in the old conditioning, seeing through and allowing it to be there completely, I’ve seen that relating has become so much easier with others. Because from where I sit, I see other as me and me as other.
Your articles are always nice to catch up on, and I’m very intrigued on your current work on getting your new journal up and running! Keep it up! 🙂
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shinyeyesyndrome
Hey there! I’m new here. Only just woke up. Shit is fucking magnificent!
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Joseph Polaschek
Hi Lori Ann!
Once again, you hit the nail on the head! (Should I expect anything but that…??) Not much to add with all the comments already made…..
I’m sure that some consider being Enlightened to mean that we don’t have normal bodily functions, pains, problems, etc. and will “stand out” in a crowd, maybe even float :-). I certainly do have problems and know (not believe) that answers and direction either “serendipitously” cross my path or come in insights or inspiration and night dreams. It’s occasionally difficult to not step in and attempt to help someone without guidance to do so. But I know that if I do something without being guided, it may not turn out well.
Just for the record, there are many ways to Enlightenment depending on the person. Also, personally I don’t accept karma nor re-birth. As one person expressed it, we are “re-born” every instant. And I don’t split hairs on terminology. I agree that words are just “pointers” and no one can define them except us.
It’s always a pleasure to follow your Blog and congratulations on the Huffington Post honor!
Big Hugs and a rewarding New Year of extended Joy, Love and Laughter to all!
Joseph
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1EarthUnited
Your “sporadic reportage” is a sign that your mind is generating less drama for you to share. Living life day by day, writing poetry is not a bad way to go. Trying to convey the inconceivable is a trip. Along with the consciousness shift, old metaphors seem inadequate, Russian Dolls are made in China LOL! Enjoy your holiday season and keep expanding within. 😀
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Davidya
Great article, Lori Ann. I’ve found the clarity/drama thing alternates a little as we go deeper into it and some of the deeper shadows come to light. Also, with later transitions, the initial adjustment may stir things up. You may find your blogging comes similarly in waves. Quieter during the relatively even keels. Then there will be another wave post-the next wave of development. I look forward to it. 😉
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Lori Ann Lothian
Thanks for your feedback. I just also read through the debate/discussion between you and joel. It made for interesting reading
hugs
Lori Ann
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Davidya
(laughs) Thanks for the even keel, Lori Ann. It is curious what arises sometimes. Not sure the point of the debate, but sometimes it comes out later how it landed somewhere else.
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Mark
Nice postings. So I have a question for everyone. You have awakened, do any of you have a Guru (ie a perfect Master or one who is fully Self-Realizied) as your teacher you sought out to now help you come to full Self-Realization? If yes, what was your reasoning for doing so? if not, what is your reason for not doing so? Thanks.
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Joel
It seems to me the great masters are all dead now out of the ones who are known. I have met unknown living ones from time to time who have helped me, but there is no question of having reasons for seeking them out since I didn’t seek them out, it is simply the transmission of chance encounter. The question of mastery is an interesting matter. But most who call themselves gurus are fools.
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Davidya
Hi Mark
I have a teacher that arose shortly before the initial shift. They have helped with pointing and clarity to recognize what had shifted or seeing how it wasn’t yet complete. That seems to help the process. It also connected me with a community of the awake which can be useful in various ways.
I have noticed a quality of “resonance” – a teacher we can “hear” in silence is more potent but who we resonate with varies by person. This is not about conceptual teachings.
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Joel
Ah, the wit of the humourless, never long in coming.
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Joel
The fact that this comment went in the wrong place does have a certain humour, but I expect who it was intended for will still have his ears burning. Hollow victories and all that.
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Lori Ann Lothian
THe aboriginal dreamtime concept reminds me of this: He regarded incipience as the point something leaves non-being (WU) and enters being (YOU) (Lynn, p 84). From subtle signs in the incipient moment it is possible to have a precognition of the way things are going to go and know whether it will lead to good or bad fortune, such that we can attend to it if necessary before the change sets in and takes root.”
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Lori Ann Lothian
Hi Mark:
@ Joel (hey joel, what about dream portents in all of this?)
Hi Mark, If you click link to my first post, I tell the tale of my intersection with Adyashanti’s teachings just before the non=-event of apparent awakening–or realisation, or whatever we call it. But I also spent a four day retreat with Ganga-ji six weeks prior….and dreamed a female guru/teacher in an ashram setting in India (have never been there) kissed me on the forehead/third eye and said, “this is a full transmission?” that dream and many others in the year/months before, were all about a death of some kind, a sense of my own death. I will chronicle these dreams at some pt, they are in dream journals, because the messages from them were clear: something is about to radically shift/change, something in your life with the magnitude of death. What died (or fell away) was the unreal sense of “I”; the locus of operation life long, the “me” faded into a ghost-like identity. Not gone, but not longer in the foreground.
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Joel
@ Lori — Interesting you mention dream portents in that i was writing something about them earlier this evening in regard to Richard Wilhelm.
In my view, a portent is a portent, and it doesn’t make any difference whether it comes in a dream or in waking life, since there is fundamentally no difference between the two except as a phase change (states). The difficulty is in knowing what a portent means, or whether it means anything at all. In Yijing studies there is a concept known as “ji”:
http://www.biroco.com/yijing/glossary.htm#ji
The form of what we regard as a portent or omen is very similar to this kind of recognition of germinal change.
There is a certain irony that some here have me down as dismissive of phenomenality, when actually my abiding interest has always been the interception of it at its earliest stages. That I have chosen to emphasise its unreality in discussion with some here is merely the truth of its earliest interception, which never changes. But regardless of its emptiness the phenomenon is nonetheless patterned as it swirls out of nothingness, and it is these patterns that one can come to grasp through an understanding of “ji”, without being misled by conditioned thinking in regards to them, which merely replaces the patterns with familiar overlays from memory, thereby creating “a world” according to stale imagination rather than fresh insight. Certainly there doesn’t need to be a world for there to be a world.
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Davidya
Thanks, Lori Ann, for sharing a little of your lead-up. While I rarely have such dreams, I often have a sense of impending shift. Even when it is strong though, the actual experience of it will always be a surprise. It’s lovely to watch the play unfold while knowing when the chapters change.
Joel – I don’t recall the chapter, and I know you’re not much interested in the dead, but your comment reminds me of the Bhagavad Gita describing how at first we recognize things after the fact, then during, then finally at their inception. Only then can we resolve karma without acting it out, watch the patterns unfold, and see as you describe. Recognition of inception is where the potency lies. It is the font of pure creativity and insight.
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Barbara
So it’s not me that wakes me up with a headache some mornings bcause I’ve (or a mysterious but now understood little nesting Russian doll) been grinding my teeth in worry about fading finances? Good to know. Beyond that, great thoughts and things to consider. 😉
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Joel
Say you dreamt you’d had your legs amputated then you woke up with a headache from teeth-grinding but your legs have returned, are you either of those?
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Joel
An I that doesn’t mind what happens presupposes something is happening. So the one that doesn’t mind something perceived to be happening is the one who hasn’t yet realised that nothing is happening. This is the same one who supposes they have awakened when no-one was asleep.
Same as the mind getting caught up in the idea of the witness witnessing the witness and the witness of that, which only leads to an infinite regression of mind. What you really want is the one who placed those two mirrors to face one another who has no temptation to step in between.
This idea of ‘abiding awakening’ involves a someone trying to abide in a something, doesn’t it? What’s better is giving up the idea of having made any progress at all, less adulterated by concern. Have you noticed that everyone who imagines they are ‘awakened’ have a timer going since what they imagine happened to them? This ought to be a clue that the timeless eternity still eludes a little bit.
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Lori Ann Lothian
I like this word apparent word happening. “What you really want is the one who placed those two mirrors to face one another who has no temptation to step in between.”
Yes, Joel to awakening and the illusion of a happening. Simply the subjective experience is most like that of waking from a dream, or from one layer of illusion to the next. Thing is, sages and teachers use the dream/sleep/awake metaphor because it close-but-not-quite as a descriptor. When language attempts to arrange itself around the contours of non-dual perception, it’s better arranged as poetry, in Hafiz and Rumi riffs.
Good to see you here. Merry Holidays.
LA
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Joel
Yes, but while we’re using words we may as well try to choose the good ones. I prefer ‘realisation’, because there is certainly that, whereas ‘awakening’ is merely passing from one state to another. That said, perhaps those who use the word ‘awakening’ are actually describing just that, and I am wrong to suppose they mean ‘realisation’. Some new agers use the word ‘awakening’ merely to mean they are first in the queue when the UFO arrives, and as a qualification for channelling. Others mean they have had a satori and think that’s the end of the game, so they become confused when they get depressed again. At least with ‘realisation’ one can legitimately ask: “What have you realised?” With ‘awakening’ all you can say is: “Oh, you thought you were asleep did you?”
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Lori Ann Lothian
HI Joel. Well, I was entertained and curious as I read the exchange between you and Davidya. Great to hear you both. Thank you for your presence here — I see great patience alongside your sharp tongue, and I can’t help but think of the Zen masters known to whack students with sticks, or like coyote/Loki, play trickster to point the way. Or perhaps you would say, you are simply being played.
Have a great new year.
LA
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Davidya
Joel – words are symbols or pointers. Their meaning from one person to another varies. Awakening and Realization are both words used to describe the subjective experience. But both words have other traditional meanings that can mislead. Realization in this sense isn’t a conceptual recognition, though that may follow. Awakening is similarly not from a nights sleep but rather lifetimes. I’ve also come to prefer Realization but define it more in the sense of becoming, in the sense of recognizing who you are more deeply. You can ask someone what they’ve realized but they’ll have words only when it’s clear and their mind has considered the experience of it.
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Joel
Davidya — Well of course it’s all words, that goes without saying (no pun intended). As for awakening being from ‘lifetimes’, that’s an assumption I think you should look at, while we’re using words in an attempt to (self-evidently) describe something as understood by the mind.
As for ‘becoming’ — how can realisation be an effect of becoming? It is not the end of a process, it is the end of process altogether, to the extent that is is realised there never was a process, that that was an illusion.
And yes, I am using words as pointers, hopefully they will serve this purpose in pointing out a distinction between what you are saying and what I am saying. As to whether it is of any value, it seems of some limited value to me since I see the distinction and feel it might be of value to you to share this understanding. But sure, write it off as merely appealing to the mind if you wish, if your mind is confident with that, since that is indeed all it is.
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Davidya
Hi Joel
I’ve found it good to remind that words are just pointers as some so easily take them otherwise. For myself, “lifetimes” is the experience so not an assumption. I fully appreciate the context this is in and don’t confuse the journey of the soul with the higher Self. That said, the magnitude of lila cannot be understood without recognizing one’s own journey in it.
I mean becoming in the sense of recognizing what you always were. But it has a subjective quality that way and helps differentiate it from some conceptual discovery. As for it being the end of all process, I appreciate where you are coming from. It can certainly seem so for a time when the seeker ends and the habits of “me” wind down. However, Self realization is not the end but rather the beginning. You are of course welcome to discount any idea of something past this, but just remember – just as concepts of enlightenment can be a barrier to it, so too can concepts of being finished be a barrier to continuing. You can of course quote a number of sages that will agree with you. Equally, I can quote a number who see as I see and more. I can explain the mechanics too. The real trick is to stay open and allow the unfolding to continue however it arises. No concepts will ever explain it.
Awakening is deeply profound and significant. But it is in bringing that awakening into the world when the real embodiment happens.
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Joel
Davidya — Experience or assumption, it doesn’t matter, that’s still the play of phenomena. I too have had experience of the apparent ‘fact’ of other lives and the bardos, very vividly so, but to whom do they appear is always the question. It’s just phenomena. Interesting, but of no great relevance to self-realisation. As for the ‘soul’, there is no such thing. Transmigration is just a story for children. Interpret experience as you like, but know it is interpretation not truth.
As for ‘bringing awakening into the world’ — what world? The world of sense perceptions, feelings, thoughts, ideas, and concepts? Is there some other world you know of? Of course not, there is no world without you to create it. It’s an amusing game, of course, to follow the apparent forms and learn from them, to as it were ‘re-enter’ the stream of becoming, and credit karma with having some private message for you and go ‘deeper’ in its exploration. We all like watching movies, the attraction is there. But all you are talking about is a ledge in the ledgeless void where you happen to have made an illusory nest. But if it works for you, and to you this is ‘awakening’, it is no business of mine to attempt to shake you out of this dream.
Self-realisation is neither the end nor the beginning, such ideas fall away. Ends and beginnings, comings and goings, is all phenomena appearing upon the changeless, which knows no end nor beginning save what is temporarily supplied to it by belief in illusion.
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Davidya
Hi Joel
If the “me” is an illusion, how is it that it created the world? And how is it that the apparent world is a shared reality? The me didn’t create the world. It just created the idea it did. Who’s dream is it then? And you believe you’re not in a dream, yet open your eyes and type those words? You may say the who you are in essence is beyond all these things. But this is still duality, if one is divorced from what is here. Non-duality or Oneness is totally inclusive, even of the dream/ play.
We’re all a living story. But there are better story-lines to follow. Ho Ho Ho!
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Joel
Davidya — You have yourself in some fine knots there. You’re talking about ‘the dream’ as if it exists and needs to be ‘included’ for it to be ‘nonduality’. This is a pure fantasy, what is not real does not exist and it is the assumption that it does and should be somehow ‘integrated’ that is precisely the duality that the idea of nonduality seeks to address. It is the illusion of an apparent “I” that sees the illusion of the world. What does that matter to YOU?
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Davidya
😉 Joel – then the Upanishads and the rest of Vedanta are pure fantasy? And awakening is awakening to reality and what follows is back into illusion? Who has the fantasy? And who is caught in the new fundamentalism? I didn’t say the unreal exists. I said that in true non-duality, the world is recognized as none other than That. Surely you’ve hear the old phrase “I am That, Thou art That, all this is That.” This is not saying this world is illusion, it’s saying it is nothing but That.That alone Is. This is a deeper realization than the Self.
Maya does not mean illusion. It’s means ‘to build’. As Shankara observed, when tamas is dominant, creation behaves as a covering, obscuring what is behind it. When rajas is dominant, the world is illusory. When sattva becomes dominant, the world is seen as Lila, the play.
Self Realization is not non-duality, its the recognition of our true Self within. If we have not recognized the world as none other than That, it is still duality. Very simple. As long as there is other, it is not one. And this is no personal fantasy but the teaching of many great sages, past and present.
Believe what you will. Be happy to discuss the fine points but not much interested in arguing beliefs.
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Joel
Davidya — The world is that. Hence, no world, only that. As you say yourself in your quote: “That alone is.”
What is it you think I have said that is different? That I have made the world nothing? Well the world is nothing. Only that is.
Of course the world is illusion. It is unreal and doesn’t exist. Only that exists. In other words, that’s not the world, that’s that. Consider that you are labouring your own misunderstanding,
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Davidya
Joel – it is not a misunderstanding. It is the experience, confirmed by teachers and the ancient texts. ‘That alone is’ does not mean the world is illusion, it means the world is That too. The illusory part is thinking it is anything else. We know this from the inclusion of ‘all this is That’. Or is That illusion also?
The world is illusory. There is a difference between saying it doesn’t exist and saying it’s not what it appears to be. It is fully valid to see the world as a mirage. Just as it is fully valid to have seen the world as all that is real. My point is simply neither of these is the complete truth.
If the world doesn’t exist, why do you experience it? A personal projection from a me that doesn’t exist? The reality of Self Realization doesn’t even make sense. Oneness is much more inclusive and complete, resolving many apparent paradoxes. There is a recent understanding being taught that there is one waking and Self Realization and non-duality/ Vedanta are one and the same. This is completely contrary to these original teachings, as one can see from even a superficial review of the 6 Darshanas or systems of Indian philosophy. Baring some variation in the use of terminology, there appears to be a lot of the awake who are over-estimating their progress. Of course, if it’s all illusion, it’s very easy to discount any other perspective.
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Joel
Davidya — All I can say is consider what I have said when it has sunk in and you are not merely throwing thought structures at it. It is a question of standpoint. I am speaking directly, you are quoting what you have read and saying things like ‘things don’t make sense if…’, which is a sure sign that you are considering it, not looking directly.
I don’t doubt that you have had experiences, I can see that, but i suspect you have lost touch with what you once experienced and have parceled it up in this kind of attempt at understanding. What I would like for you to see is that I am speaking directly and it is not a matter of considering it, it is a matter of seeing it if you see it, or not if you don’t. You don’t, so therefore you offer me your considerations and the benefits of your reading, which are of no interest to me.
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Davidya
Yes, I am using concepts to bolster my points, just as you are. It is the nature of language. Of course I have considered how to describe it, how to be heard. I make reference to others to illustrate that this isn’t some personal fantasy you suggested. You discount my statements as not a direct seeing because I say things you disagree with. You say I don’t see because I don’t see as you do. I have seen as you see but no longer do. Not because it was lost but because an even deeper, more inclusive value unfolded. Things have evolved the way those before have suggested. In fact, even what I have described in recent comments is falling away as a still deeper perspective is unfolding. Beyond Atman, consciousness, any sense of being or non-being, etc.
You seem very clear in your truth. Enjoy it, but don’t be surprised if it falls away one day, just as “the world is real” did. That is the main point I tried to make. Enough said.
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Joel
Davidya — Oh, you don’t resonate with what I say because you have gone even deeper. In fact, you have gone deeper just in the time it has taken to write your comments. Perhaps you will go so deep that you will come back round again and see what I was talking about in a new light. Possible, since you are going so deep all the time.
Far be it from me to suggest that you have profoundly scratched the surface.
You are right to notice that I am clear. How can you be clear if you cannot say a sentence without the next one disagreeing with it it? Is that talking from clarity? I think you’ll find that you are only mining a rich seam of confusion. How do I know? Just reading your words. You haven’t even realised I have said what you have said, but I have said it from the changeless, and you have said it from the changeful. And do you know why that is? Because you are oblivious to the unchanging. This is why you cannot understand what I am saying to you. You allow temporary ego structures to supercede each other ‘going deeper’. The enlightened superego calls with its promises of ‘deeper and deeper’, mediocre teachers and misreadings of ancient texts confirm your ‘understanding’, beyond! beyond! — but when someone tells you the actual truth in a chance encounter, you are not up to the transmission of it, you don’t know where to grab hold of it, it’s a slippery fish, and something cleverer than yourself.
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Davidya
And who is that is judging my growth and journey? Who discounts it as delusion? Who continues to say I say things I didn’t? Who feels they have to argue rather than explore? Doesn’t sound like the changeless I know.
If you have not found the love that infuses all, you’re not done.
When you are all, you can feel both touching an object and the object being touched. (though there is no separate subject or object) If you have not felt lively silence right in the senses, you’re not done.
If you have not discovered how this world comes to be, and shifted from world-as-illusion to world-as-play, you’re not done.
I could go on and on, but the point is – Self Realization is a wonderful thing. But if you hold to the idea you’re done, it will serve as a barrier, just as similar ideas were prior to awakening. Stay open, have fun.
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1EarthUnited
Joel and Davidya, the both of you have quite a dialogue going on here. Imagine the two of you sitting silently in a room together, just being. Without philosophizing, are there still two minds? If the concept of “physical reality” disappears now, show me “me” and “you”. Are the both of you aware of each other outside of your own thoughts… is your awareness real? Are you able to drop these “deep” & “mystical” questions… or are you attached to the answer? Could your illusion of reality be the fundamental basis of life?
Hmmm.
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Joel
1EarthUnited — It has always been a traditional practice to iron out misunderstandings through dialogue. If you have none you wish to address, save rhetorical ones for effect, that’s fine. But I have never seen the worth of complacency. All seeds struggle to emerge from the earth. All confusions struggle to disentangle themselves.
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Joel
Davidya — I merely offered you a hand. I don’t mind that you reject it. It is understandable that you should feel antagonistic towards a truth you have not realised and prefer one you think you have. Therein is contained the whole difficulty of this journey. I have often wondered what would make those who feel they have found the truth already more responsive to the truth that eludes them, and I have come up with only one answer: continue telling it like it is.
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Davidya
Joel – funny – I could repeat your comment verbatim.
You can only point. The listener will only look when they’re ready.
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Joel
Davidya — Exactly.
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waynewirs
Thank god! There’s nothing worse than two fundamental nondualists arguing about nothing. It’s like watching a Seinfeld marathon with all the funny parts removed.
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Joel
Waynewirs — I started reading your post that you linked to, but I didn’t get much past the bit where you said you used to be a hypocrite but now everything has changed. You are quite a grumpy old sod in your mystical oneness.
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1EarthUnited
@ waynewirs, LOL! Hey, what’s the difference between watching a couple of dueling non-dualists and paint drying? A: Once the paint finishes drying, it serves a purpose! 😉
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waynewirs
@ 1EarthUnited: Excellent! Hey, how many fundamental nondualists does it take to screw in a light bulb? None! They don’t believe in light bulbs!
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Joel
@1EarthUnited & Waynewirs — Fascinating to see the degree to which some people feel intimidated by a conversation they don’t understand but would like to feel superior to through the use of cheap gags. Yes, I can see you two are really getting to grips with the Great Mystery.
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waynewirs
Why are fundamental nondualists so angry? Because no one understands they’re No One.
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waynewirs
Why do fundamental nondualists call ordinary life things like “The Great Mystery?” Because their heads are Empty!
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waynewirs
Why don’t fundamental nondualists ever get divorced? Because they don’t believe in separation.
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waynewirs
Ok. I’m done now. Have fun talking to your Self Joel! (Don’t take it too seriously). 🙂
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Joel
Waynewirs — Shall I laugh at your jokes out of pity? As for ‘fundamental nondualist’, I don’t think this really has any meaning beyond being some kind of slur on an imaginary strawman constructed by one type of mystical failure to criticise another type of mystical failure.
As for taking you seriously, don’t worry Wayne, there was never any danger of that.
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waynewirs
Ok. One more and then I’ll let Joel – who just seems to need to get the last word/insult in – talk to him Self:
Why are fundamental nondualists so insulting and mean? Because they don’t believe in compassion. 🙂
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Davidya
Whats the difference between a “fundamental nondualist” and a “former” fundamental nondualist? One thinks he knows, the other thinks he is.
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Joel
Wayne, I regard every interaction between two people as an opportunity for an exchange that may lead to some kind of blossoming for one or either party. Even with someone as cowardly and sneering as yourself, I presume there is a reason you have come forward to meet me like this, and it is precisely out of compassion that I engage you when others would not have bothered with you, writing you off as some kind of jerk.
Even as you insult my capacity for compassion, knowing nothing about me, still I am open to you in ways you appear not to understand. Things we look for don’t always come in the form we expect, and it is down to us not to dismiss what comes with a spirit of sulky refusal, but, rather, sharpen up our game and meet the challenge of them. That’s what i have to tell you, Wayne, this cold night. Regard it as a fortune cookie slip if that is the limit of your current capacity, and throw it away after reading. I really don’t mind.
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1EarthUnited
Hiya fellas, here’s my humble contribution… I offer you my rug. It’s a magical rug that’ll really tie this room together! Pay attention now:
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cequiestest
There are awekening(s)s and Awekening.
Most of the satsang néo-advaita teachers in the market place are awake, The mind stories lost their painfull attraction and addiction, but his power is not definitily dead.. Vasanas (personnel desires) are weak but samskaras (transpersonnel desires) are still here. Time is necessary (depend of the body-mind destiny) untill the end of this impersonnel process and Awekening arrive.
Things happen when the “I” is naturaly tired with the identification. The illusion vanish in the What it is it is what it is.
We are Infinite Space who include all .
The back stage become the front of the stage.
Some people are very in hurry to declare “I am awake” when they see the light for the first time,
It is perfect in the Absolute. Who care ?
Happy New year
RV
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Lori Ann Lothian
Thanks RV. can you share for me what a transpersonal desire would look like?
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cequiestest
The Absolute (what ever the name you want, what we really are) play the game (lila) of the hide and seek with Himself. There is only One impersonnel-personnel player.
He play the identification with the body-mind (soma-psyché).
Mind is composed (to make short):
– Samskara ; collectif unconscious with all the memories, desires, impressions of the mankind ( sins of the world in christian term). A small part, more or less heavy is embodied a baby body. Samsakaras explain the deep desires of a particular body-mind. After few years of life, vasanas are created.
-Vasanas; familial, social, national conditionning, beliefs. The “personnal ” conditionning.
– Traumatics events create an other layers (kouein in chineses culture).
Between the age of 3 and 6 years old, the identification of the “Absolute’ with all this layers come true. The false identification become effective;
The majority of the humanity are unconscious of all this layers and don’t care. They forget, in daily life, the pain with different addictions (sex, work, drug, religious beliefs, hope, material succes, shooping…) and create more mess.
A minority try to cure the traumatic event in thérapy, self development, méditation,…
Few become aware of the first cause of the ontological pain: the identification with the false. When it is seen, there is an awakening (momentary; few seconds or fex months). More or less quickly, a natural process dissolve the vasana first (most of the neo advaita teachers in the market place are here, and it is perfect), then the samskara (very few). The definitif Awakening arrive (or not).
All the level of the game are perfect.
The false identification can not do anything to accelerate the process.
If you think you can do something (sadhana), do it !
If you understand who you really are, relax and enjoy the game.
Keep quiet, like said Ramana.
Why this cosmic game ? There is no why, no one, nothing ! Only Love (other name of the Infinte Space we are) play.
How to know Myself ? Very simple indeed,: look 180 degre, relax in the being feeling. All it is there. Stop to believe in the beliefs and all the projection. Stay in the what it is.
“The Rose is without ‘why’—she blooms because she blooms.”
Johann Angelus Silesius
Merry holidays Lori (joyeux Noël !)
Hervé
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Joel
Samskara and vasana are synonyms. Any differentiation between them is needless.
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Lisa Kathleen
Suffering isn’t around much anymore; when it shows up it’s because of spontaneous infatuation with the thought of it. Fuel. Then comes the re-awakening of what is not at all here/now. Suffering evaporates. Nice post, Lori… 🙂
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Lori Ann Lothian
Thanks Lisa.
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Wayne (Wirs)
Happy New Year Lori Ann. Yes, I too have often wrestled with the “real world” since awakening three and a half years ago, and only recently – http://waynewirs.com/2012/beyond-enlightenment/ – have become comfortable with integrating all the various “levels” of consciousness. Most awakened teachers focus on just the emptiness level, but there is so much more to it than that. No one level is the “right” one. All are just parts of the wonderful, dynamic Whole.
Be well.
Wayne
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Brook Bartlett
I do believe that there is something beyond this awakened state. I was not sure about it until recently. At some point we will experience a shift where it is not just the end of suffering but the end of the paradigm which allows us to say “I am suffering but I don’t mind.” This is nothing ot strive for but a natural progression of our species. How I am doing in this new age is feeling that beginning to break down all the walls of the time space continuum itself. There is not only one who is allowing all suffering, there is a universe which creatively creates and destroys the one who suffers so fast that it might have never happened. We are losing the ability to abide in self stories as we had lost the ability to abide in belief of sufferin. It’s an action rather than an insight. Happy New Year!!
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Lori Ann Lothian
HI love–in the first four months, I would have said this was true for “me” — the end of the paradigm which allows us to say “I am suffering but I don’t mind.” There was no suffering at all, to mind ,or not. I love this line “losing the ability to abide in self stories.” thanks for you
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Donna Highfill
Lori: This is spectacular. I love – “And finally realize we were far too large to fit in that doll all along because our infinity is spaciously so.” Beautiful. Thank you.
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Lori Ann Lothian
thanks Dame Donna!
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