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circastes
Big Questions Small Head



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Untainted happiness being our nature
#20319986 - 07/24/14 05:56 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Is this the essence of spirituality? The bliss of godliness, your own Self revealed, never lost never forgotten only journeying within itself with the use of the illusion of mind - some power it has to play with itself... finally, one day, rediscovers itself, usually in the later twilight years of life but in the true religious seeker comes early, these eager and thirsty souls, these sons of God... maybe in their twenties or thirties, they find out that...
...it is but your own nature that you have sought long after, your own essence... the eternal untainted happiness of nothing but what you essentially are.
Is that the essence of spirituality, is it the ultimate spiritual prize? Yourself, eternal and free, surely playing some trick on yourself... finally comes home and that's that.
Is there anything more spiritual?
-------------------- My solitude... My shield... My armour... TESTED WITH FULL FORCE
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HeartAndMind


Registered: 01/09/10
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: circastes]
#20320697 - 07/24/14 09:50 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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I don't really know. That's what I'm pondering lately on. I really don't know, but I'm sure as hell that all this suffering and sense of needing something is not true. I don't know now if I just stop striving for things, for the things that are essential for survival and overall physical well being I will be OK. Something tells me that I won't. But life will show anyway. There's that neediness to make things better or correct them for me. It's really driving me nuts. So I think that there's no thing that is spiritual. That's ever going to make me peaceful when I'll get it. Maybe when I'll recognize something which always was and I'll have no doubt that it will be. Maybe if there is such thing, then it must be here as well. Not as a thing.
Excuse me for my rant, just felt like that. And your thread was there, very related.
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mr lizard
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: HeartAndMind] 1
#20320974 - 07/24/14 11:27 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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"My sorrow will be over, when I get home"
If you live in a particular environment long enough you will tend to adopt the customs there and forget that there might be other ways to do things. I don't think there are many people who really feel at home in this world because we always have a sense that there is more to reality than what custom dictates. Spirituality to me is like returning to a default mind-state, with no preconceptions. It might be happiness, I don't know, I'm not there yet. I do know that I was much happier as a child so that might point to a truth in what you are saying.
The only time I have experienced pure Bliss was during a lucid dream where I learned a new kind of yoga from Diamond Dallas Page. I hadn't thought about DDP in over ten years but I googled him when I woke up and it turns out he actually is teaching people yoga these days..
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cez

Registered: 08/04/09
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: circastes]
#20321326 - 07/24/14 01:01 PM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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I think op is spot on.
When we withdraw our mind from the world and our past/future we are left with peace. This peace is what death is I imagine.
Death is an illusion just like separation is. Choosing pain instead of joy is the choice we choose. That everlasting joy is always with us, even in our darkest moments, because we are forever free to withdraw ourselves from everything ephemeral, and be as we were created. Unharmed and pure. I don't think this is spiritual rhetoric but how things actually are when we escape the mind-programming that the world made of us.
The essence of living in the moment is peace, to be one with Christ. To die each moment as Zen Buddhists would say. Never looking back or forward and simply being is delightfully tricky, because the mind is intricately fashioned to run away from the present, to disguise it with different I's jousting for position of our attention, and they are all liars...Creations of the world. Microcosms within us of what is happening outside of us.
It's a journey we are all on and one we all eventually learn. We've been deceived since birth. What's wonderful is the journey has an end. Initial birth is the beginning of deception, the bodies cessation is the unveiling of the truth we've all been walking with. The time in between is for us to play. To choose this joy that is inherently ours, or trick ourselves with the illusion of suffering.
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Deviate
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: cez]
#20322062 - 07/24/14 04:08 PM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Yeah, that is pretty much it OP. The Philokalia states we must give up ALL hope in things visible. Contemplate that for a little while.
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery



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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: circastes]
#20322091 - 07/24/14 04:15 PM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
circastes said: Is this the essence of spirituality? The bliss of godliness, your own Self revealed, never lost never forgotten only journeying within itself with the use of the illusion of mind - some power it has to play with itself... finally, one day, rediscovers itself, usually in the later twilight years of life but in the true religious seeker comes early, these eager and thirsty souls, these sons of God... maybe in their twenties or thirties, they find out that...
...it is but your own nature that you have sought long after, your own essence... the eternal untainted happiness of nothing but what you essentially are.
Is that the essence of spirituality, is it the ultimate spiritual prize? Yourself, eternal and free, surely playing some trick on yourself... finally comes home and that's that.
Is there anything more spiritual?
IMO it's the center of self centered indulgence. But you enjoy it until you have to leave home and get a job and experience the joys of nature (survival of the fittest)
I really don't understand what passes for "spirituality" around here. I recently was in discussion with another poster here who responded when I pointed out all the evil and suffering his favored religion was causing in the world replied matter of factly that he was in no way concerned with that as long as the religion fulfilled his personal spiritual needs. And there you have it folks.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
Edited by Icelander (07/24/14 04:19 PM)
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r72rock
Maybe so. Maybe not.




Registered: 01/06/09
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: circastes]
#20322407 - 07/24/14 05:19 PM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Maybe? What is a spiritual prize?
I get those feelings of bliss, but then I come down and realize that the dishes need to be washed. Then later that night, I'm scared shitless in my bed thinking about existence. It all passes, even those bliss like states and scared states.
-------------------- Current favorite candy: Peanut Butter Kisses
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Icelander
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: r72rock]
#20323403 - 07/24/14 08:07 PM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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Deviate
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Icelander]
#20325013 - 07/25/14 02:25 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
Icelander said:
Quote:
circastes said: Is this the essence of spirituality? The bliss of godliness, your own Self revealed, never lost never forgotten only journeying within itself with the use of the illusion of mind - some power it has to play with itself... finally, one day, rediscovers itself, usually in the later twilight years of life but in the true religious seeker comes early, these eager and thirsty souls, these sons of God... maybe in their twenties or thirties, they find out that...
...it is but your own nature that you have sought long after, your own essence... the eternal untainted happiness of nothing but what you essentially are.
Is that the essence of spirituality, is it the ultimate spiritual prize? Yourself, eternal and free, surely playing some trick on yourself... finally comes home and that's that.
Is there anything more spiritual?
IMO it's the center of self centered indulgence. But you enjoy it until you have to leave home and get a job and experience the joys of nature (survival of the fittest)
I really don't understand what passes for "spirituality" around here. I recently was in discussion with another poster here who responded when I pointed out all the evil and suffering his favored religion was causing in the world replied matter of factly that he was in no way concerned with that as long as the religion fulfilled his personal spiritual needs. And there you have it folks.
If you are referring to me, then no, I never said that. I actually said I was deeply saddened by any suffering caused by the church.
But how can a religion "cause" suffering? It's people who cause suffering. A religion is just a set of beliefs and practices. It has no power to do anything except the power which you yourself give to it. You say religion causes suffering, how do you know that perhaps what if suffering is causing religion? Did you ever think of that one. If you only look at things from one angle, all you'll see is that angle, which appears to evidently be the case with you here. But what if causality is a little more complex than that, and things are all linked in a complex network of relationships which humans then label "causes" and "effects"
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deCypher



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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: circastes]
#20325087 - 07/25/14 03:17 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Nope, disagree entirely.
Our true "nature" isn't any kind of emotion. Happiness is an emotion, bliss is an emotion, so is pain and so is suffering.
We are human beings and we experience these emotions when we are feeling good, or when we are feeling bad. There is no intrinsic emotion to be felt without any initial prompting sensation.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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easyskunkin


Registered: 12/23/03
Posts: 565
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Deviate]
#20325360 - 07/25/14 05:19 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
Deviate said:
But how can a religion "cause" suffering? It's people who cause suffering. A religion is just a set of beliefs and practices. It has no power to do anything except the power which you yourself give to it.
Wrong. Beliefs directly influence the way people act. For example, the ridiculous belief Germans are a superior race of promethean heroes and Jews an inferior race of parasites directly caused the holocaust. Superstitions about sorcery carried by the Catholic church led to the extermination of hundred of thousands, if not millions of individuals during the dark ages, etc...
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L'intérêt à croire une chose n'est pas une preuve de l'existence de cette chose. Voltaire ; Remarques sur les pensées de Pascal (1728)
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cez

Registered: 08/04/09
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: deCypher]
#20326040 - 07/25/14 09:34 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
deCypher said: Nope, disagree entirely.
Our true "nature" isn't any kind of emotion. Happiness is an emotion, bliss is an emotion, so is pain and so is suffering.
We are human beings and we experience these emotions when we are feeling good, or when we are feeling bad. There is no intrinsic emotion to be felt without any initial prompting sensation.
Our true nature is peace. One can easily misidentify peace for joy or happiness. We deviate from this nature as the body prompts us to maintain it..From there the peace becomes survival of the fittest which is not peaceful.
Peace is the intrinsic state of being for all animals IMO.
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Shroom Detective
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: circastes]
#20326322 - 07/25/14 10:38 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
circastes said:
...Is there anything more spiritual?
1 Corinthians 2:14 - "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."
-------------------- "I, Falcon91Wolvrn03, am a BIG FAT LIAR; so much so, that my pants are on fire."
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Icelander
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And if god said it, well...
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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Khancious
da Crow



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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Icelander]
#20327636 - 07/25/14 04:19 PM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
Icelander said: And if god said it, well...
Now now Moses, thou shan't burn every bush, some you must trim
-------------------- I am that, which is.
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: cez]
#20327740 - 07/25/14 04:46 PM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
cez said: Peace is the intrinsic state of being for all animals IMO.
How did you arrive at this conclusion? Nature is a constant state of warfare; organisms eating each other, stealing each other's mates, competing for territory and food, etcetera etc. Animals are lucky if they can feel peaceful.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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cez

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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: deCypher]
#20327818 - 07/25/14 05:02 PM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Withdraw your mind from all worldly affairs and tell us what you feel.
Animals don't reflect and project like we do. IMO it's much easier for them to maintain peace. They have to take care of their bodily instincts as we do, but then they just go right back to peace whereas we then go to whichever delusion we deem fit for the moment.
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deCypher



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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: cez]
#20327904 - 07/25/14 05:19 PM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Well, their mental state is certainly different from humans... they lack our specific level of self-awareness. Consequently they cannot ruminate on their inevitable mortality, they cannot suffer from death anxiety, they cannot be tortured by guilt for past actions or by worry for future ones, and they are not bothered by any questions of right or wrong.
That is certainly a more peaceful mind-state than ours, I'll grant you, but in day-to-day life they are constantly occupied with the bare needs of survival: finding food, protecting their own, finding a mate, and making sure they live another a day. That, to me, is not peace, even if they lack the capacity to deem it so.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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DividedQuantum
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: deCypher]
#20328796 - 07/25/14 07:59 PM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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I don't really care to endorse either view, but I feel I ought to interject to point out that it seems to me that cez is making reference to the concept of Buddha-nature, and relatedly samsara, karma and nirvana.
At least, his points remind me strongly of that spiritual configuration. I hope that is a proper clarification.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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Chronic7
Registered: 05/08/04
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: circastes]
#20330660 - 07/26/14 05:04 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
circastes said: Is this the essence of spirituality? The bliss of godliness, your own Self revealed, never lost never forgotten only journeying within itself with the use of the illusion of mind - some power it has to play with itself... finally, one day, rediscovers itself, usually in the later twilight years of life but in the true religious seeker comes early, these eager and thirsty souls, these sons of God... maybe in their twenties or thirties, they find out that...
...it is but your own nature that you have sought long after, your own essence... the eternal untainted happiness of nothing but what you essentially are.
Is that the essence of spirituality, is it the ultimate spiritual prize? Yourself, eternal and free, surely playing some trick on yourself... finally comes home and that's that.
Is there anything more spiritual?
All words miss the mark but that's pretty much it, realizing beyond belief that 'it', what you seek, however you word it, love, truth, peace, happiness, bliss, awareness, the universe, the source, infinity, is what you essentially are
Quote:
deCypher said: Nope, disagree entirely.
Our true "nature" isn't any kind of emotion. Happiness is an emotion, bliss is an emotion, so is pain and so is suffering.
If truth exists then in my opinion it must be true all the time, it must be lasting, permanent, and existent/true unto itself so beyond dependence on opposites for its existence, like DeCypher pointed out above it can't really be an emotion as no emotion lasts for very long and they all have opposites
So truth can't be an emotion, but that's not to say it isn't happiness/bliss, as strictly speaking is bliss even an emotion? is bliss a form of energy in motion? does bliss itself come & go? Sure our attention can move, come & go, so our experience of different states comes & goes, but that's not proof that bliss itself comes & goes and therefore proof that bliss isn't synonymous with truth
The happiness we usually experience appears to come & go as it is usually in reference to some temporary thing having brought about the feeling of bliss, so when the desired thing goes or we no longer desire it the happiness appears to go along with it, so from that perspective calling our true nature happiness isn't right, as what lasting bliss is there in temporary things? That isn't proof that bliss itself is a temporary thing, just that our attribution of it is
We use language to describe what we feel and experience, and in this sense happiness is an emotion, but only for the sake of language, if we look closer at it, when we feel bliss is that feeling on the move? Is bliss found in mental motion? Or isit felt/experienced/realized in and as stillness?
I like the term unalloyed happiness, as it is the same apparently moving/shapeshifting happiness we temporarily feel from worldly objects that come & go, but it is unalloyed, unmixed, untainted, distilled, straight up no mixer
No words are ever right when talking about truth, they are limited to pointers, signposts, if someone mistakes a signpost for the destination then they won't get anywhere
Quote:
HeartAndMind said: I don't really know. That's what I'm pondering lately on. I really don't know, but I'm sure as hell that all this suffering and sense of needing something is not true. I don't know now if I just stop striving for things, for the things that are essential for survival and overall physical well being I will be OK. Something tells me that I won't. But life will show anyway. There's that neediness to make things better or correct them for me. It's really driving me nuts. So I think that there's no thing that is spiritual. That's ever going to make me peaceful when I'll get it. Maybe when I'll recognize something which always was and I'll have no doubt that it will be. Maybe if there is such thing, then it must be here as well. Not as a thing.
Excuse me for my rant, just felt like that. And your thread was there, very related. 
What else can you do that you're not already doing? You seem to be surviving pretty fine to me, you're working towards a sustainable future and also have time to contemplate existence
Maybe if you gave full attention to attaining things of the world you could have surplus to survival, but you don't strike me as the kinda guy that would find those things satisfying for long... you tend to have your sights set higher
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HeartAndMind


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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Chronic7]
#20330670 - 07/26/14 05:09 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
What else can you do that you're not already doing?
That got me pondering over my so called problems. Thank you.
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Chronic7
Registered: 05/08/04
Posts: 13,679
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: HeartAndMind]
#20330673 - 07/26/14 05:12 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
HeartAndMind said:
Quote:
What else can you do that you're not already doing?
That got me pondering over my so called problems. Thank you.
You're welcome
My next question is - are you the doer of anything?
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HeartAndMind


Registered: 01/09/10
Posts: 1,410
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Chronic7]
#20330750 - 07/26/14 06:08 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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I seem to be. But when I recall dreaming state I am also a doer of dream body, even though not aware of my waking state body while it could have moved during sleep. I actually have sleepwalked when I was a kid. Remaining completely unaware of bodily actions. I feel this is really important, but it really tickles my mind!
I don't really think thoughts too, they come by their own, it seems. But I feel like I have the power to acknowledge reality and importance of thoughts at least. Just like everyone else, equally.
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Chronic7
Registered: 05/08/04
Posts: 13,679
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: HeartAndMind]
#20330779 - 07/26/14 06:27 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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A few people have said the only choice you have is to inquire into reality or not, i say that even that is predetermined
If anyone looks within themselves and can find a doer, let me know
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HeartAndMind


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Posts: 1,410
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Chronic7]
#20330856 - 07/26/14 07:03 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
The Chronic said:
If anyone looks within themselves and can find a doer, let me know
Oh, there's no such entity as doer. Haha, the body is the only doer.
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Chronic7
Registered: 05/08/04
Posts: 13,679
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: HeartAndMind]
#20331189 - 07/26/14 09:14 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
HeartAndMind said:
Quote:
The Chronic said:
If anyone looks within themselves and can find a doer, let me know
Oh, there's no such entity as doer.
Do you feel the freedom in that or is it intellectual knowledge?
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cez

Registered: 08/04/09
Posts: 5,854
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: HeartAndMind] 2
#20331832 - 07/26/14 11:53 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
HeartAndMind said:
Quote:
The Chronic said:
If anyone looks within themselves and can find a doer, let me know
Oh, there's no such entity as doer. Haha, the body is the only doer. 
The body is certainly not the doer imo. The body is the vehicle for doing, but does not direct the mind if mind is under your control.
This is the biggest delusion I think..To believe in our bodies. This is the idea of separation and of death. My body is apart from your body, therefore we are separate. This is true logically, but I do not believe this to be true in truth. Our bodies disguise the oneself I believe we are. The programming begins the moment we are encapsulated in a body, and from there that programming can be so strong that one fully believes they are a body and nothing more and terrified at the idea of the cessation of body and being.
We are not a body. We are free. The body is the cell we choose to lock ourselves in. We were created I believe, to come full-circle. To believe we are bodies and believe in this delusion only to come around full-circle at our own pace to recognize this is not so.
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HeartAndMind


Registered: 01/09/10
Posts: 1,410
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Chronic7]
#20332088 - 07/26/14 12:50 PM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
The Chronic said:
Quote:
HeartAndMind said:
Quote:
The Chronic said:
If anyone looks within themselves and can find a doer, let me know
Oh, there's no such entity as doer.
Do you feel the freedom in that or is it intellectual knowledge?
It's more than intellectual knowledge. But it still needs pondering, I feel. I sort of snap in and out of it.
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HeartAndMind


Registered: 01/09/10
Posts: 1,410
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: cez]
#20332101 - 07/26/14 12:52 PM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
cez said:
We are not a body. We are free. The body is the cell we choose to lock ourselves in. We were created I believe, to come full-circle. To believe we are bodies and believe in this delusion only to come around full-circle at our own pace to recognize this is not so.
That's beautiful way to see it
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Deviate
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: easyskunkin]
#20335908 - 07/27/14 02:51 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
easyskunkin said:
Quote:
Deviate said:
But how can a religion "cause" suffering? It's people who cause suffering. A religion is just a set of beliefs and practices. It has no power to do anything except the power which you yourself give to it.
Wrong. Beliefs directly influence the way people act. For example, the ridiculous belief Germans are a superior race of promethean heroes and Jews an inferior race of parasites directly caused the holocaust. Superstitions about sorcery carried by the Catholic church led to the extermination of hundred of thousands, if not millions of individuals during the dark ages, etc...
Whoa whoa whoa, hold up. I did not say that beliefs didn't unfluence the way we act, I said that religion is just a set fo belief and practices. Now we all know that the Holy Bible says that we should not kill, that we should love our neighbor as ourself and that we should do unto others as we would have others do unto us. If everyone adhered to those three simple things, the world would be a completely different place. So you see, religion, like everything else, is neutral. Its like a hammer. You can use it to build a house for you and your wife and child or you can use it to bash in the head of your neighbor's child, thus murdering him. But the hammer itself isn't to blame. We don't put hammers on trial, we put the people who used them on trial.
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Deviate
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: deCypher] 1
#20335947 - 07/27/14 03:10 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
deCypher said: Well, their mental state is certainly different from humans... they lack our specific level of self-awareness. Consequently they cannot ruminate on their inevitable mortality, they cannot suffer from death anxiety, they cannot be tortured by guilt for past actions or by worry for future ones, and they are not bothered by any questions of right or wrong.
That is certainly a more peaceful mind-state than ours, I'll grant you, but in day-to-day life they are constantly occupied with the bare needs of survival: finding food, protecting their own, finding a mate, and making sure they live another a day. That, to me, is not peace, even if they lack the capacity to deem it so.
To you, but we are not talking about you. We are talking about animals. One thing you might not be taking into account is that finding food, finding a mate, mating, raising offspring , etc can be FUN. How do you know that animals aren't having fun when they do those things?
Also I would like to ask what is peace to you? If attending to survival needs and peace cannot co-exist for you, then what kind of peace do you experience? A peace which ends the moment you must find food or find a mate, is not a very good peace imo. It seems almost as if from your point of view, one cannot simultaneously be peaceful and yet also engaged in life. Why do you feel this way? It is my experience that the more mental peace I have, the more I am able to engage in life and without the peace being disturbed because one starts to notice that life itself is valuable.
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Deviate
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: deCypher]
#20336007 - 07/27/14 03:37 AM (9 years, 6 months ago) |
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deCypher said: Nope, disagree entirely.
Our true "nature" isn't any kind of emotion. Happiness is an emotion, bliss is an emotion, so is pain and so is suffering.
We are human beings and we experience these emotions when we are feeling good, or when we are feeling bad. There is no intrinsic emotion to be felt without any initial prompting sensation.
So what is there, then? I say, consider your sleep. When in deep sleep you are not feeling emotions. And yet viritually everyone associates this state of deep sleep with peace. People say "I slept happily" not "I slept neutrally" and people covet sleep, rather than treat it as something neutral.
Now I am going to remind you that this the spirituality and mycisticm forum. If you are postin' here you should be at least a little familiar with what spiritual people and mystics say. What do they say? Well, they pretty muych all say that the natural state, is peace or unconditional love, not neutrality. I should add that this is consistent with my experience. Emotions come and go but existence itself does not come and go, it remain always existing. If we isolate this sense of "I am" and allow it to be by itself, not hooked onto to circumstances constantly, what do we find? I find that it seems naturally peaceful and then it is when I become involved in identifications, that is when the peace becomes disturbed. Now, you may have a different experience. It may be that when you remain with the sense of amness, you experience blankness or ntruality. This is perfectly normal in fact, and this is also my own experience. But what I learned from my spiritual teachers was that this happens when one is a beginner and if you can make it through this stage, then what happens next is very beautiful. You see, as one inquires into hi or her true nature, the mind throws everything it can at you in order to make you stop, give up or deciee it ain't worth it. hence, the mind will attempt to convince you the natural state is just a neutrial boring state so that you dont go for it no more.
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Deviate]
#20345469 - 07/29/14 04:21 AM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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Deviate said: To you, but we are not talking about you. We are talking about animals. One thing you might not be taking into account is that finding food, finding a mate, mating, raising offspring , etc can be FUN. How do you know that animals aren't having fun when they do those things?
Also I would like to ask what is peace to you? If attending to survival needs and peace cannot co-exist for you, then what kind of peace do you experience? A peace which ends the moment you must find food or find a mate, is not a very good peace imo. It seems almost as if from your point of view, one cannot simultaneously be peaceful and yet also engaged in life. Why do you feel this way? It is my experience that the more mental peace I have, the more I am able to engage in life and without the peace being disturbed because one starts to notice that life itself is valuable.
My household pets (two cats) are far more peaceful than the wild, stray, mangy cats I observe outdoors. My cats don't have to worry about finding food. They don't have to worry about encroaching on another stray cat's territory. They don't have to worry about being raped by some stray tomcat just because he liked the scent of their pheromones.
My household pets experience far more peace than any wild animal does. Also, look up Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Mere survival is on the bottom of the list. No one is capable of being peaceful while constantly having to worry about finding food and shelter. It is only after satisfying the most basic needs that one is able to even think about peace, let alone be peaceful.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Deviate]
#20345475 - 07/29/14 04:26 AM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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Deviate said:
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deCypher said: Nope, disagree entirely.
Our true "nature" isn't any kind of emotion. Happiness is an emotion, bliss is an emotion, so is pain and so is suffering.
We are human beings and we experience these emotions when we are feeling good, or when we are feeling bad. There is no intrinsic emotion to be felt without any initial prompting sensation.
So what is there, then? I say, consider your sleep. When in deep sleep you are not feeling emotions. And yet viritually everyone associates this state of deep sleep with peace. People say "I slept happily" not "I slept neutrally" and people covet sleep, rather than treat it as something neutral.
Now I am going to remind you that this the spirituality and mycisticm forum. If you are postin' here you should be at least a little familiar with what spiritual people and mystics say. What do they say? Well, they pretty muych all say that the natural state, is peace or unconditional love, not neutrality. I should add that this is consistent with my experience. Emotions come and go but existence itself does not come and go, it remain always existing. If we isolate this sense of "I am" and allow it to be by itself, not hooked onto to circumstances constantly, what do we find? I find that it seems naturally peaceful and then it is when I become involved in identifications, that is when the peace becomes disturbed. Now, you may have a different experience. It may be that when you remain with the sense of amness, you experience blankness or ntruality. This is perfectly normal in fact, and this is also my own experience. But what I learned from my spiritual teachers was that this happens when one is a beginner and if you can make it through this stage, then what happens next is very beautiful. You see, as one inquires into hi or her true nature, the mind throws everything it can at you in order to make you stop, give up or deciee it ain't worth it. hence, the mind will attempt to convince you the natural state is just a neutrial boring state so that you dont go for it no more.
Seems like you are falling into the "bliss trap". Read further into Eastern/Buddhist studies of meditation and they will all tell you that feeling sensations of bliss is a natural step on the way to enlightenment. However, to proceed further one must not give into these feelings and become entrapped by them, because true enlightenment is not an emotion--it simply is. To get sucked into these feelings of euphoria and "true happiness" is to miss the point, because beyond a certain level of spiritual awakening, none of that really matters. Everything just simply... is.
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Aaahhh... The pursuit of happiness. It is so elusive, yes? Here in America we even have the right to pursue it. The pursuit of happiness isn't a right in every country, you know. So consider yourself one of the privileged on the planet, even if you don't have much money or material things. You are still among the privileged in the world because you at least have the opportunity to be in a moment such as this, reading and pondering meaning.
Chasing bliss is a useful thing in the beginning of the spiritual search. It is usually what entices the spiritual seeker to "go on the path" in the first place. The possibility that happiness can be found encourages the personality to look away from illusion. If the personality is satisfied and happy in illusion, there is no reason for it to look elsewhere for anything. This is why the need to chase bliss can be useful in the beginning, for it alerts you to the idea that there is "something else" in life.
Chasing bliss is what started the path for everyone, in some way or another. Didn't you start your spiritual search because you were disappointed with your life for some reason and wanted something you didn't have? Let's be honest. There was not enough love, not enough security, not enough money, not enough friends, not enough power, not enough happiness, not enough something, right?
There is something astray, however, when the spiritual seeker focuses too intently on the pursuit of happiness--the dreadful "chasing bliss" trap. The pursuit of happiness isn't recognized as a trap. This is where chasing bliss is not useful on the spiritual path and serves rather as a distraction. What's worse is that you actually never get the prize! Ah, this is the biggest kicker, the biggest brain twister. And such a let down! Many a spiritual path has been abandoned because of this terrible let down when the seeker finally realizes there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow called happiness.
This is a terrible moment (or it could be debated that it is a wonderful moment) on the spiritual path. This is often called the dark night of the soul. This is when the personality realizes it has lost the chasing-bliss-game and can never win, no matter what it does. This is when you realize that all strategies of the personality, all the knowledge gathered, all the work you have done on yourself, is still not going to save you from fear. It is not going to give you 24/7 bliss or even simple human contentment.
This is the cusp of enlightenment. At this time on the spiritual path, the search is almost over. All escape routes from fear have been exhausted and there is no way out. This is the moment for the breakthrough. This is the moment of surrender, of giving up. This is when enlightenment is in your grasp. This is when the personality gives up and stops trying to get anything. If the spiritual seeker doesn't make it through this initial let-down about how the spiritual path has betrayed the personality, the human psychology might be seriously dam-aged until truth is once again pondered. Disappointment in God, or bitterness about the fact that the spiritual path never panned out, is a terrible "spiritual poison" to live with.
Some people get stuck here, right on the cusp of enlightenment. This is because the last step, surrender of the personality, is not taken. This is truly the only step necessary after the initial turn of attention away from the illusion of "my life," yet it is the hardest. Everything else, even on the spiritual path up to this point, has been a strategy of the personality to get what it wants. Surrender of all strategies is the end of the spiritual path, the conclusion of the search. For all seekers, this is the last and most difficult hurdle to cross no matter how long or short a time has been spent strategizing to attain enlightenment. To let go of what the personality wants, mainly happiness, is a big stretch, a quantum leap, into the unknown.
Many techniques have been taught on improving the personality or reality, like affirmations and visualizations. Many strategies for enlightenment have been given, like sitting in the lotus position for twenty years. These teachings assert that happiness will be found when the personality is perfected, all social skills are attained, all flaws are smoothed over, the physical body is detoxified and functioning, and manifesting skills are useable. This is the dreadful chasing-bliss-trap on the spiritual path that most seekers get caught in it for an entire lifetime. When this moment of surrender and giving up is embraced, true enlightenment is possible. The seeker then passes into the consciousness beyond illusion. If this moment is surrendered to and the seeker drops into it, enlightenment is finally realized and the personality viewpoint is surpassed. It is not about building the personality or having the power to manipulate physical reality. It is all about dismantling the illusion, not building the illusion. Who you really are is already perfect and at ease with all that is in existence. It is the illusion that must be dismantled in order to reach perfection. This does not mean perfection of the personality or situations in life. It is perfection that is already here in you, the container for all that is happening. This container is called conscious-ness. Everything else, every experience from human bliss to human terror, is but a product of this consciousness.
Once you realize who you are you can see through the illusion as if it is air, all done with mirrors and light. You can see your life from God's viewpoint for you are that viewpoint. This perspective is an amazing place to experience life from, for it is like being in a lucid dream that is magically here in the middle of the vast arena of eternal consciousness. Your eternal perspective of this life is a place where God is looking at itself. If you realize that you are this eternal awareness experiencing itself in various ways, like having a lifetime on Earth, you are enlightened, which means "to be in knowledge of."
This does not mean that the personality colored Earth life is going to be full of human bliss all the time. It does mean, however, that you are at ease in the eternal self, which never dies and can never be harmed by any experience, not even the ones the personality is having on earth. You can live as this eternal self because you are not the personality. You can live knowing the secret of life on earth: that it is all just a thought in the mind of God. You are privy to the knowledge that even the unpleasant experiences in life cannot harm you, that you long outlive your personality with all its motives, drives, accomplishments and strategies.
Living from this perspective takes away the fear that the personality constantly lives in and is also trying to avoid. This is the place of no fear, if it could even be called a place. How can there be fear if harm and annihilation are impossible for eternal consciousness? The fulfillment you seek on the spiritual path is within you. Your true identity needs no fulfillment and has no need to chase after bliss, a fleeting emotion at best. You are that which is already whole. You are that which contains bliss, among other emotions, each appearing and disappearing in the attention of consciousness. You cannot get or attain that which is already in you. It is only attention that shifts. The bliss did not go away from you. It is still there. Eternal self, which you are, just wants to dream and experience itself. It doesn't care if all those dreams and experiences are pleasant or unpleasant, for it knows what is behind the illusion: God's consciousness dreaming. It also knows that it is dreaming an illusion. You are that consciousness, formless and without change.
Be this in daily human life, and your human life will have a different flavor. There is a reward for living life with eternal perspective, even though the reward is not necessarily what the personality wanted in the first place when it started the spiritual search. The reward will not be 24/7 bliss. Nope, not going to get that. The reward might not be perfection of the personality, or having everyone love and adore you. It might not mean that you have financial wealth and the ability to manipulate reality in your favor with metaphysical mind powers. What it does mean is that your life will arrange itself to reflect that you live as eternal consciousness, rather than the human personality.
What that reflection will be for you as an individual, you can only know when you have dismantled the personality and realize who you really are. It is a mystery until then, and it is a different picture for everyone. What can be guaranteed, however, is that it will be a better reflection than the personality can ever create with all it's strategies, flaws, shortcomings, misinterpretations, mind tricks and pitfalls. The personality chases bliss and avoids fear at all costs, focused on getting fulfillment from the illusion. Only when the personality strategies are dropped, only then will you find the truth of who you are, independent of a personality on Earth. Try walking through your daily life as eternal conscious-ness rather than the human self. Pretend that you are having a lucid dream, that you are actually formless consciousness sleeping somewhere outside of this universe, dreaming. Play with this for just a few moments per day if you find it difficult not to slip back into the personality self. You might be on automatic programming for a while until realizing yourself as eternal consciousness becomes a habit and you no longer have to remember to hold attention this way. Override the perspective you have as a human whenever you can, as you think of it.
Looking at life as eternal self, rather than your human perspective, is a good habit to develop. This is where joy and happiness have been hiding, here in the eternal self. Look at whatever you are experiencing from this new perspective and see if anything is different. Even ordinary experiences can be used as vehicles for exercising this eternal consciousness perspective. As you eat your dinner notice what the tone of your experience is when you take a bite as a human. Then notice the tone of your experience as your take a bite as eternal being. Investigate this, just for curiosity's sake. You don't even have to believe these words. You can still investigate, discover for yourself and see if something is different.
You will slip back into the personality perspective, even after you have discovered your true identity. You might as well assume that you will slip back within a week, maybe a day or two, an hour or even another few minutes from now. Don't worry about this. There is no contest to see how long you constantly maintain your eternal perspective. Now you know the secret of who you are, your true identity, and you can awake again whenever you realize that you have fallen back to sleep. You can return instantly to enlightenment, to your true identity as dreaming eternal consciousness. Human bliss will no longer be the goal. Human happiness, whatever that means to you, will no longer be the elusive pot of goal at the end of the rainbow. The chase for bliss will be abandoned. Human emotions will remain passing moments, which continue to come and go in your human life. Instead, you will find that which transcends any human emotion. It is the bliss of knowing who you are, knowing that you cannot be harmed, even if you lose your car, lose your friends, your lover, lose your house or even your life. This is where you will find the no-fear, peace and ease that you have been looking for in your chase for bliss and the pursuit of human happiness. Eternal self is already happy.
May you find the truth of who you are in this coming year of 2004. This might be the first year of living life as your eternal self rather than your human self. This is a radical invitation, and will have powerful effects on your life. If you develop the habit to live as eternal self which cannot be harmed by life on earth, your life will be different by the end of the year, if not sooner. You don't have to say one affirmation or energize one visualization! Physical reality is an automatic reflection machine. It will respond to your consciousness independently of your personality's strategies. No mind tricks needed! Find out what your reflection looks like in physical reality when you live your life as God's eternal consciousness rather than the human personality. It will be a beautiful thing indeed, and the chase for "something" will be over. Then you will live in the eternal ease that transcends all versions of happiness, including bliss. When you as a human experience bliss, the true identity of yourself has surfaced. It is in the very nature of your eternal self. Now you know where to find true bliss. It is in giving up all strategies for attaining human bliss.
http://www.peopleandpossibilities.com/chasingbliss.html
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Deviate said: So what is there, then? I say, consider your sleep. When in deep sleep you are not feeling emotions. And yet viritually everyone associates this state of deep sleep with peace. People say "I slept happily" not "I slept neutrally" and people covet sleep, rather than treat it as something neutral.
Just to address this, people generally tend to covet [deep] sleep because the lack of experience contained therein is preferable to the negativity they are exposed to throughout their day-to-day existence, not because the lack of experience was a positively felt emotion (since it, by definition, isn't felt at all).
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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Deviate
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Registered: 04/20/03
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: deCypher]
#20345756 - 07/29/14 07:20 AM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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deCypher said:
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Deviate said: To you, but we are not talking about you. We are talking about animals. One thing you might not be taking into account is that finding food, finding a mate, mating, raising offspring , etc can be FUN. How do you know that animals aren't having fun when they do those things?
Also I would like to ask what is peace to you? If attending to survival needs and peace cannot co-exist for you, then what kind of peace do you experience? A peace which ends the moment you must find food or find a mate, is not a very good peace imo. It seems almost as if from your point of view, one cannot simultaneously be peaceful and yet also engaged in life. Why do you feel this way? It is my experience that the more mental peace I have, the more I am able to engage in life and without the peace being disturbed because one starts to notice that life itself is valuable.
My household pets (two cats) are far more peaceful than the wild, stray, mangy cats I observe outdoors. My cats don't have to worry about finding food. They don't have to worry about encroaching on another stray cat's territory. They don't have to worry about being raped by some stray tomcat just because he liked the scent of their pheromones.
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My household pets experience far more peace than any wild animal does. Also, look up Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Mere survival is on the bottom of the list.
Thats nice for your pets but not all animals are happy in captivity. Many animals prefer to live in the wild, even if it is more dangerous.
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No one is capable of being peaceful while constantly having to worry about finding food and shelter. It is only after satisfying the most basic needs that one is able to even think about peace, let alone be peaceful.
Well I am just going to quote the article you posted because as far as i could tell, it supports my position.
"Who you really are is already perfect and at ease with all that is in existence."
"you are at ease in the eternal self, which never dies and can never be harmed by any experience, not even the ones the personality is having on earth. You can live as this eternal self because you are not the personality. You can live knowing the secret of life on earth: that it is all just a thought in the mind of God. You are privy to the knowledge that even the unpleasant experiences in life cannot harm you, that you long outlive your personality with all its motives, drives, accomplishments and strategies."
Again, if peace can only be had when all our basic needs are satisfied then that is not a very good peace because it could all go wrong at any moment. There was a time in my life when I had a decent job, made lots of money, had all my basic survival needs more than satified and yet was anything but peaceful. More recently, I have fallen on difficult times. Many days I have struggled to find enough food to eat and yet, although i still struggle and suffer sometimes, I am MUCH more peaceful than I was back when I had all my needs met but was in a bad place psychologically and spiritually. Having to struggle to find food is (in my experience) not the terrible peace destroying monster you make it out to be. That is part of the game of life. Having to go hungry sometimes is not any different from having to deal with any other physical health problem. Lack of food is simply one of thousands of things that can kill or harm the body or cause pain/weakness. In fact, the Bible says that the poor are blessed and that it is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
Furthermore, Jesus Christ said "worry not for the morrow, saying what shall we eat, what shall we wear, for your heavenly Father knows you need those things... Is life not more than food and the body more than clothing?"
You see, just because you might not know where your next meal is coming from, that doesn't mean you have to let it upset you and make you unhappy. It is possible to live in the kind of faith where you learn to trust that things will be ok, even if they are painful or difficult at times. In my own experience, the more I learn to trust life and my Heavenly Father, the better I am able to deal with hardship without falling into despair and despondency.
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Seems like you are falling into the "bliss trap". Read further into Eastern/Buddhist studies of meditation and they will all tell you that feeling sensations of bliss is a natural step on the way to enlightenment. However, to proceed further one must not give into these feelings and become entrapped by them, because true enlightenment is not an emotion--it simply is. To get sucked into these feelings of euphoria and "true happiness" is to miss the point, because beyond a certain level of spiritual awakening, none of that really matters. Everything just simply... is.
I did not say enlightenment was an emotion, I said that it wasn't neutrality. I never said that enlightenment was just feeling an emotion of bliss 24/7 or that one reaches it by chasing pleasurable feelings. I would agree that one could say that it simply is, because words cannot capture it. However, many teachers have been quite clear that is not some spaced out, detached neutral state. For instance, Buddha said that Nirvana was the highest happiness. Jesus spoke of a "kindgom of heaven", Hindus call it Sat-Chit-Ananda which means existence-consciousness-bliss, Tony Parsons says that liberation is unconditional love, the Bible says that God is love, Steve Norquist said the Bliss of enligtenment was a million times beyond the bliss of IV heroin and Jan Esmann says that Self-Realization is Love-Bliss and Ramana Maharshi described it as "undescribible bliss".
Here, check out Jan's website: http://lovebliss.eu/index.html. Are you saying all these guys are wrong and you know better? And why did you post an article that supports what I and all the guys I listed are saying then?
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Just to address this, people generally tend to covet [deep] sleep because the lack of experience contained therein is preferable to the negativity they are exposed to throughout their day-to-day existence, not because the lack of experience was a positively felt emotion (since it, by definition, isn't felt at all).
Why are you so hung up on emotions? I SAID that in deep sleep there is a lack of emotion. Here is where we seem to disagree. You seem to think that without emotion, there can be no enjoyment, everything is neutral or something like that. I am saying that no, the absolute (into which one is absorbed albeit unconsciously, when in deep sleep and consciously in enlightenment) is itself, self-existent enjoyment. This is what your article seems to imply and this is what pretty much every teacher I know of says, for instance to quote Ramana Maharshi "The Eternal being is only happiness". This eternal being is coming even before such things as the brain and nervous system, so (and Tony Parsons affirms this) enjoyment is not even dependent on the existence of a brain and nervous system, which obviously are needed for feelings human emotions. Or as the Bible puts it, "God's love endures forever". God's love is not some petty human emotion dependent on the brain and nervous system, it is eternal. To quote the Bible again "The Lord is an eternal rock". It doesn't come and go like human emotions, which are relative. I can see then the temptation to assume it is neutral, but I think that neutrality is in fact just another human feeling/emotion. Life itself is may be neutral in the sense that it has no specific goal or intention for existing, but it is ecstatically alive and loving and blissful and free, not neutral. How is this the case? its the ultimate mystery.. The ultimate mystery for me at least, how is God no thing (for God is not a thing, but spirit or living nothingness) and yet at the same time he is very happy?
Edited by Deviate (07/29/14 07:27 AM)
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deCypher



Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Deviate]
#20348510 - 07/29/14 07:24 PM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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Deviate said:
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deCypher said: My household pets (two cats) are far more peaceful than the wild, stray, mangy cats I observe outdoors. My cats don't have to worry about finding food. They don't have to worry about encroaching on another stray cat's territory. They don't have to worry about being raped by some stray tomcat just because he liked the scent of their pheromones.
My household pets experience far more peace than any wild animal does. Also, look up Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Mere survival is on the bottom of the list.
Thats nice for your pets but not all animals are happy in captivity. Many animals prefer to live in the wild, even if it is more dangerous.
If you don't understand how a fat, happy indoor cat who never has to worry about being fed, finding water, attacked by other animals, or being hit by a car isn't generally more peaceful than a stray cat struggling to survive in the city, I don't know what to tell ya dude. Of course certain animals will be happier if they have a larger territory to roam, but that in turn provides risks like predators, lack of food source, etcetera etc.
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Deviate said: You see, just because you might not know where your next meal is coming from, that doesn't mean you have to let it upset you and make you unhappy. It is possible to live in the kind of faith where you learn to trust that things will be ok, even if they are painful or difficult at times. In my own experience, the more I learn to trust life and my Heavenly Father, the better I am able to deal with hardship without falling into despair and despondency.
I don't mean to say it is necessarily impossible to feel peaceful when your basic survival needs aren't being met; my point is that it's much harder to do so. Again, look up Maslow's theory of needs and the concept of self-actualization:
 The best way to become a fully self-actualized (aka peaceful) person is to first focus on your survival needs. It is extraordinarily difficult to focus on stillness while one is starving to death. Next, focus on safety. When a bear is chasing you, one is highly unlikely to become "at ease with the inner self".  And so on, moving up the pyramid. Which is not to say that it is impossible to jump to self-actualization without any of these more fundamental needs being met; Maslow's point is that one must have a solid foundation to lift into the heavens, metaphorically speaking. Quote:
Deviate said: I never said that enlightenment was just feeling an emotion of bliss 24/7
OK, great. Why do you then promptly go ahead to contradict yourself in the very same paragraph? 
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Deviate said: Steve Norquist said the Bliss of enligtenment was a million times beyond the bliss of IV heroin and Jan Esmann says that Self-Realization is Love-Bliss and Ramana Maharshi described it as "undescribible bliss".
If you read Buddhist meditational texts (which I generally trust on the matter because they've been doing it for thousands of years), you will learn that yes, you will experience ecstatic states of supreme bliss during your meditation. However, the point is not to focus on them. Enlightenment is NOT one and the same with this state. To move on to true Nirvana one must dispassionately regard the feeling of bliss, and just observe. Do not cling to it, do not dwell it, do not confuse it for the eventual goal. This is what I mean by saying our true Buddha nature is not an emotion. It is not bliss, it is not happiness, it isn't anything at all. It just is (in other words, neutrality), and assigning value-laden labels like Bliss or Happiness to it means you have dragged your pure No-Mind down into the intellectual mire of conceptualization.
Before Enlightenment chop wood carry water, after Enlightenment, chop wood carry water. 
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Deviate said: I SAID that in deep sleep there is a lack of emotion. Here is where we seem to disagree. You seem to think that without emotion, there can be no enjoyment, everything is neutral or something like that.
Absolutely. Enjoyment is by definition an emotion. Buddha-nature is beyond happiness and fear. Buddha-nature just is, without any human qualifiers like you're trying to ascribe to it. At least according to what I've gleaned from my readings on the subject and from personal experience.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
Edited by deCypher (07/30/14 12:10 AM)
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Deviate
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: deCypher]
#20353226 - 07/30/14 09:39 PM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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If you don't understand how a fat, happy indoor cat who never has to worry about being fed, finding water, attacked by other animals, or being hit by a car isn't generally more peaceful than a stray cat struggling to survive in the city, I don't know what to tell ya dude. Of course certain animals will be happier if they have a larger territory to roam, but that in turn provides risks like predators, lack of food source, etcetera etc.
I am not denying this, but I think it is important to understand that liberation/enlightenment is beyond circumstances. It is freedom from circumstances, but not necessarily detachment from them. A jnani may struggle to find food, they may even appear dismayed about their lack of food, but they are not experiencing the situation the same as an ego identified individual. They know that no matter what happens, even if they starve to death, things will be ok and not just that they will be ok, but that they already are ok right now.
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I don't mean to say it is necessarily impossible to feel peaceful when your basic survival needs aren't being met; my point is that it's much harder to do so. Again, look up Maslow's theory of needs and the concept of self-actualization:
Harder for whom? That is the question I feel is it not being addressed. I certainly agree that for the average person, finding food is very important to their level of peace and obviously lack of food is going to destroy their peace and well being and could also slow down their spiritual growth even. However, for a liberated person, the amount of food they have has nothing to do with their liberation. It doesn't mean they won't try to find food if they need it or that they cannot feel feelings like hunger, but they perceive all this differently. They have a freedom from circumstances and this freedom doesn't change if they have to skip a meal or if their life situation becomes more challenging.
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OK, great. Why do you then promptly go ahead to contradict yourself in the very same paragraph? 
I don't contradict myself. I say that because enlightenment often gets talked about in terms of love, bliss, happiness, etc, many people imagine that it involves attaining some state in which you feel bliss all the time but thats not what it is at all. Instead it is actually even better than that, it is freedom from all experiences, be they blissful or unhappy. This freedom is not describable but it is not a detached neutral state, it is itself blissful and loving. But these are not emotions. To put it simply, everything is energy and energy in its unmanifest form is love-bliss.
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If you read Buddhist meditational texts (which I generally trust on the matter because they've been doing it for thousands of years),
As opposed to the Judeo-Christian tradition which just started yesterday? Not that Buddhism isn't trustworthy, but there are many ways to speak about enlightenment and how things are from the Buddhist perspective isn't necessarily the only way to look at them.
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you will learn that yes, you will experience ecstatic states of supreme bliss during your meditation. However, the point is not to focus on them. Enlightenment is NOT one and the same with this state. To move on to true Nirvana one must dispassionately regard the feeling of bliss, and just observe. Do not cling to it, do not dwell it, do not confuse it for the eventual goal.
Ok you already said this and I already responded and told you that yes I am familiar with this teaching. Simply repeating it over again isn't enough to change my mind. This may be the Buddhist way but this is not the only way to enlightenment. That is why I suggested you read Jan Essman. He says that there are two forms of Self-realization, one with love-bliss and one without. According to jan, Self-realization without love-bliss will always eventually turn into Self-Realization with love-bliss, so either form will do. However, Yan also says that because Self-realization with love-bliss is the eventual goal, there is no harm in developing love-bliss now, even before basic self-realization. The Buddhists say that bliss is a distraction, they advocate looking for the truth from a purely neutral, observational standpoint. Yan says that this method can lead to what he calls "the Zen trap". In the Zen trap, one with becomes identified as no-mind, with void or pure nothingness being. This is not Self-Realization though, Self-Realization is complete freedom from identification with mind. Basic Self-Realization, without love-bliss is what most Buddhist meditation techniques are aimed that. This is fine, but it does not mean that other types of techniques are invalid. In fact, Yan disagrees that bliss is a distraction and instead he advocates merging in love-bliss if possible, or at least, developing love-bliss even prioor to enlightenment. You can read about his meditation techniques on his website and I encourage you to do so, for they are extremely powerful. Now I am a Christian, so I am not so into Eastern Meditation but in my tradition, we also focus on developing love-bliss before enlightenment. We go through a process where something we call the "Holy Spirit" comes and gradually warms our hearts and gives us the opportunity to choose to love God and not sin.
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This is what I mean by saying our true Buddha nature is not an emotion. It is not bliss, it is not happiness, it isn't anything at all. It just is (in other words, neutrality), and assigning value-laden labels like Bliss or Happiness to it means you have dragged your pure No-Mind down into the intellectual mire of conceptualization.
I agree that it just is but I disagree with neutrality, to me that is just another label. Neutral as opposed to what? You see, neutrality is relative. ALl the values in Samsara are relative and have opposites. Neutrality is what we measure degrees of importance relative too. The non dual Self is beyond all this labeling.
Secondly, there are a couple of disctinctions here which I think are important to make. First of all, there is an impersonal and a personal aspect to reality. Buddhists tend to focus on the impersonal, whereas Christians tend to focus on the personal God aspect. The whole encompasses both of these entirely.
This is why I must disagree with your notion that Buddha nature is nothingness, neutrality. Yes, it IS that but that represents an imcomplete picture of it, because it is also Love-Bliss. Think about Jesus Christ. Think about his great love for mankind. Think about how he gave his life for us, while we were still sinners. Now tell me, why would a neutral nothingness come into the world and preach about some spiritual Kingdom, heal people, open the eyes of the blind and then give his life? You see, you cannot ignore God's love. Love did that. ANd that is why as Yan explains, when one reaches full enlightenment, and sees oneself in everything, the result is Love-Bliss. Unmanifest love-bliss. And this is NOT an emotion, this is what is. Love-Bliss is what exists.
Again, why would Buddha say that Nirvana is the highest happiness? How do you answer that? How do respond to teachers like TOny Parsons who say that he falls in love with bus stops, trees, etc, who says that liberation is finding the perfect lover? How does neutrality in any way resemble finding the perfect lover?
Do you see now how there is something missing from your notion of enlightenment?
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Deviate
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Deviate]
#20353313 - 07/30/14 09:58 PM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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Absolutely. Enjoyment is by definition an emotion. Buddha-nature is beyond happiness and fear. Buddha-nature just is, without any human qualifiers like you're trying to ascribe to it. At least according to what I've gleaned from my readings on the subject and from personal experience. 
No, this is simply not correct you are misunderstanding. Enlightenment, is freedom from identification with mind. In that sense, it just is. It is not happiness, or bliss or enjoyment, it is simply correctly seeing what you are. So what you say is correct, speaking relative to the ignorant Self, about what we mean by "Realization".
But after you see what you really are, then comes the question what are you? What do you see that you are? You can't just say "nothing" because what sees that it is nothing and what about the world, emotions, feelings, thoughts, dream evenetc? Are you saying they don't exist? If they do exist, then do they exist apart from you? Even if they appear in void and ultimately have void as their substratem, they themselves are not void because they posses qualities. What gives rise to qualities, if nothing exists? Well, either they exist apart from you, in which case you cant be nothing or youd have no ability to see them, or they exist within you, as your own being manifest. So your experience, is the manifest expression of your own being. An elightened person recognizes the unmanifest reality which gives rise to it, the whole which contains the potential for anything. This is ultimately undescribible and I am afraid "neutrality" is a pitifully inadequate description. However, I will say that the sages claim that there is enjoyment taking place. Also, why would you want to give up everything, spend endless hours in meditation, etc, all in order to get a place where there was no enjoyment?
So if enlightenment is recognizing what you are, being enlightened is love-bliss.
Edited by Deviate (07/30/14 10:17 PM)
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Kickle
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: circastes]
#20356162 - 07/31/14 03:40 PM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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circastes said: Is this the essence of spirituality? The bliss of godliness, your own Self revealed, never lost never forgotten only journeying within itself with the use of the illusion of mind - some power it has to play with itself... finally, one day, rediscovers itself, usually in the later twilight years of life but in the true religious seeker comes early, these eager and thirsty souls, these sons of God... maybe in their twenties or thirties, they find out that...
...it is but your own nature that you have sought long after, your own essence... the eternal untainted happiness of nothing but what you essentially are.
Is that the essence of spirituality, is it the ultimate spiritual prize? Yourself, eternal and free, surely playing some trick on yourself... finally comes home and that's that.
Is there anything more spiritual?
I doubt it. At the very least compassion doesn't arise from bliss. Compassion is a response to suffering. So for this to be true one would never feel compassion, because no suffering would exist to "taint" that happiness. I have never heard of a spiritual tradition that reveals a lack of compassion. Which means I have never heard of a spiritual tradition that has an end goal of revealing untainted happiness.
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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deff
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Kickle]
#20356231 - 07/31/14 04:00 PM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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actually in buddhist traditions, nirvana is said to be the 'highest happiness' - here's a quote i dug up from accesstoinsight (a pali canon reference site):
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Nibbana is described as the highest happiness, the supreme state of bliss.[7] Those who have attained Nibbana live in utter bliss, free from hatred and mental illness amongst those who are hateful and mentally ill.[8] Sukha in Paali denotes both happiness and pleasure. In English happiness denotes more a sense of mental ease while pleasure denotes physical well being. The Paali word sukha extends to both these aspects and it is certain (as will be shown below) that mental and physical bliss is experienced by one who has attained Nibbana.
more is available here: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/desilva/wheel407.html
this is also in reply to deCypher who said that buddhist texts denote nirvana as a neutral state
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Kickle
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: deff]
#20356280 - 07/31/14 04:14 PM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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That definition still admits that there is hate and mental illness. No one need suffer when being compassionate but compassion doesn't arise in the absence of suffering.
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deff
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Kickle]
#20356329 - 07/31/14 04:23 PM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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oh there's still suffering for other beings, and then the corresponding compassion for those beings. i thought you meant an enlightened person would still suffer themselves in order to have compassion
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Chronic7
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: deff]
#20359465 - 08/01/14 08:55 AM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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The way i see it is that your identity dissolves/merges into Ananda to the point that you are that, til there's no differentiation anymore, no more ups & downs, so total peace, you go through all the blissfull experiences to keep you on the right track or even sometimes throw you off it but when you've arrived you're no longer chasing blissfull experiences, you've become an emobodyment/beacon of bliss, there's no differentiation between bliss & yourself, experience & experiencer
That being said it can be good to aim for equanimity, neutrality etc when seeking truth, so as to really go all the way beyond conviction, it can be good to reject blissfull experiences in favor of stable truth, but most people would be kidding themselves saying they don't chase after bliss
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deff
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Chronic7]
#20359499 - 08/01/14 09:01 AM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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i agree
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Deviate
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Chronic7]
#20362132 - 08/01/14 08:44 PM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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The Chronic said: The way i see it is that your identity dissolves/merges into Ananda to the point that you are that, til there's no differentiation anymore, no more ups & downs, so total peace, you go through all the blissfull experiences to keep you on the right track or even sometimes throw you off it but when you've arrived you're no longer chasing blissfull experiences, you've become an emobodyment/beacon of bliss, there's no differentiation between bliss & yourself, experience & experiencer
That being said it can be good to aim for equanimity, neutrality etc when seeking truth, so as to really go all the way beyond conviction, it can be good to reject blissfull experiences in favor of stable truth, but most people would be kidding themselves saying they don't chase after bliss
Do you think it would be correct to say that relative to the physical world or the worlds of form, in which there appears to be a duality between those worlds and the one who perceives them, the perceiver is in fact nothing and neutral but further examination reveals that the seer and seen are actually not separate but together form one thing and the nature of this thing is love and bliss?
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deCypher



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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Chronic7]
#20362145 - 08/01/14 08:45 PM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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The Chronic said: it can be good to reject blissfull experiences in favor of stable truth
This is what I strive for.
I have tried chasing bliss and it led me nowhere but downwards. Ultimately I still believe the true nature of Reality is inapplicable for any of our human labels, including "love" and "bliss". Neutrality is the best word I can think of to describe it, but of course even that is a human label in the end.
Ah, well, mysticism + language... what can you do? Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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Chronic7
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: deCypher]
#20363525 - 08/02/14 04:45 AM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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Deviate said:
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The Chronic said: The way i see it is that your identity dissolves/merges into Ananda to the point that you are that, til there's no differentiation anymore, no more ups & downs, so total peace, you go through all the blissfull experiences to keep you on the right track or even sometimes throw you off it but when you've arrived you're no longer chasing blissfull experiences, you've become an emobodyment/beacon of bliss, there's no differentiation between bliss & yourself, experience & experiencer
That being said it can be good to aim for equanimity, neutrality etc when seeking truth, so as to really go all the way beyond conviction, it can be good to reject blissfull experiences in favor of stable truth, but most people would be kidding themselves saying they don't chase after bliss
Do you think it would be correct to say that relative to the physical world or the worlds of form, in which there appears to be a duality between those worlds and the one who perceives them, the perceiver is in fact nothing and neutral but further examination reveals that the seer and seen are actually not separate but together form one thing and the nature of this thing is love and bliss?
I don't think it would ever be 100% correct to say anything about anything, we just give it our best shot, but i don't think what you said there was way off the mark
Your comment made me think of something i started becoming aware of while having an orgasm a few years ago, that love/bliss/happiness is felt in unity, whether that be unity with food, the opposite sex, an activity, or unity of the seer & the seen, when we unify it feels good, to me this implied something fundamental about the universe and the nature of separation/unity and spurred me on the great search
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deCypher said:
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The Chronic said: it can be good to reject blissfull experiences in favor of stable truth
This is what I strive for.
I have tried chasing bliss and it led me nowhere but downwards. Ultimately I still believe the true nature of Reality is inapplicable for any of our human labels, including "love" and "bliss". Neutrality is the best word I can think of to describe it, but of course even that is a human label in the end.
Ah, well, mysticism + language... what can you do? Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent. 
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Deviate
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: deCypher]
#20366037 - 08/02/14 06:34 PM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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deCypher said:
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The Chronic said: it can be good to reject blissfull experiences in favor of stable truth
This is what I strive for.
I have tried chasing bliss and it led me nowhere but downwards. Ultimately I still believe the true nature of Reality is inapplicable for any of our human labels, including "love" and "bliss". Neutrality is the best word I can think of to describe it, but of course even that is a human label in the end.
Ah, well, mysticism + language... what can you do? Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent. 
Of course it's beyond words, for words are themselves of it and within it. However, the reason it can be nice to have it described as love-bliss is because if we said it was hate-pain, then who would want to approach it? I think that fear, is what holds most people back from really opening themselves up to the Lord, or the infinite. They prefer to stay closed off and contracted because even though it hurts a lot, it is familiar and gives them a sense of control and security.
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Icelander]
#20367871 - 08/03/14 04:58 AM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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Icelander said: IMO it's the center of self centered indulgence. But you enjoy it until you have to leave home and get a job and experience the joys of nature (survival of the fittest)
I realize this is off the point you were making. There is also a lack of body language, so I cannot know your opinion on it, but something tells me you despise egocentrism. My agenda is to offer a different perspective on it, as the purpose of this forum seems to be food for thought and since inner work is quite immune to the intellectual media. If you first distance yourself from it all to gain a neutral perspective (which I am sure you have done much more than myself or most people) you see how ridiculously insignificant humanity is. It's living on a strand of dust so small it could be easily disregarded even on a small scale, like that of a galaxy's perspective. When you put it on a scale of the universe, our existence is completely irrelevant. And then you are just one of billions of this hunk of insignificance. Even the ones that could care do not. Even your mother and your dog just care about their own personal ideas of you, which represent something to them personally. Their own mind stuff, which has little to do with that which is actually you. You are only a symbol of that which they base their own intellectual interpretation of you. That which you actually are they cannot know, they can only imagine it based on their own perception of what they are themselves. What you are left with is only yourself. You are the only one in the vast universe that knows what being you actually feels like and don't have to use imagination to construct it. All mental constructs are only one's ideas and imagination and are no more valid than a fantasy of a pool party with 2001s playboy calendar crew. They are simply not real. The fact is: You only have you, your feeling of existence, the here and now and only this perspective, which you carry with yourself through your eyes. Hence egocentrism is the only realistic view of the world you can possibly have. It is not good or bad or right or wrong, it is simply the only one available without having to imagine it. Thanks.
-------------------- It's fine.
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Deviate
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: cbub]
#20375305 - 08/04/14 09:48 PM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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Thank you for pointing that out. It reminds me of a discussion I was having with my sister a few weeks ago, she studies anthropology and as a result she thinks that just about everyone or every culture or humans in general are always being ethnocentric or anthropocentric. I was trying to explain to her, that we have no other way to be.
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deCypher



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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Deviate]
#20375736 - 08/04/14 11:21 PM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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Deviate said:
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deCypher said: This is what I strive for.
I have tried chasing bliss and it led me nowhere but downwards. Ultimately I still believe the true nature of Reality is inapplicable for any of our human labels, including "love" and "bliss". Neutrality is the best word I can think of to describe it, but of course even that is a human label in the end.
Ah, well, mysticism + language... what can you do? Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent. 
Of course it's beyond words, for words are themselves of it and within it. However, the reason it can be nice to have it described as love-bliss is because if we said it was hate-pain, then who would want to approach it? I think that fear, is what holds most people back from really opening themselves up to the Lord, or the infinite. They prefer to stay closed off and contracted because even though it hurts a lot, it is familiar and gives them a sense of control and security.
I don't know, I kinda feel like it's false advertising to label enlightenment as love-bliss because in the end it is nothing compared to these human emotions. Of course it's neither hate-pain, but you get the idea.
Perhaps the best way (indulge me as I try to market Enlightenment to the masses ) would be to say that with Enlightnment, negative feelings simply go away. This is more truthful than saying that one will experience 24/7 Love and Bliss while angels are singing heavenly choirs into your ear drums, certainly. And I think it's pretty honest... Enlightenment involves dispassionately recognizing the constant flood of emotions, both positive and negative, that enter our mind-stream. By recognizing them, not indulging in them, and letting them pass and go, one becomes free (or at least more free) from the chains of indulgence and restraining emotion.
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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Deviate
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: deCypher]
#20377655 - 08/05/14 10:37 AM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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Perhaps we should leave it to those who are enlightened to define enlightenment to the masses.
To me, saying that negative feelings go away, well i don't see how that is any less false than saying it is love-bliss. Enlightenment doesn't mean the body becomes immune to pain or the mind loses the ability to experience sadness or negative emotion. THe way I understand it, is everything is seen from a different perspective. So while the average person might interpret pain in a very negative way, an enlightened person does not see pain as an obstacle. But the only way to truly understand it, is to be enlightened.
Another place where I think confusion may be arising is that you seem to only be describing the manifest side of enlightenment.
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Enlightenment involves dispassionately recognizing the constant flood of emotions, both positive and negative, that enter our mind-stream. By recognizing them, not indulging in them, and letting them pass and go, one becomes free (or at least more free) from the chains of indulgence and restraining emotion. 
This is all manifest phenomena. In fact to me this doesn't even sound like a description of enlightenment, it sounds like a description of dispassion, which one develops through spiritual practice. In enlightenment, one is beyond all this. The manifest remains but one becomes aware of the unmanifest, which is more real than the manifest. The unmanifest, is described as being pure, that is to say it is an undifferentiated whole. One part of the unmanifest isn't one way and another part another way, its all just the unmanifest. And it IS like this 24/7, it does not change, only the manifest changes. The unmanifest is before space, time, change etc. Words cannot really describe it, but one thing that all the sages seem to say is that it is very very very good. It is not a painful place to be.
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Icelander
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Deviate]
#20382127 - 08/06/14 10:41 AM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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Perhaps we should leave it to those who are enlightened to define enlightenment to the masses.
and exactly how would the unenlightened know who those "enlightened" ones are?
I've seen enough around this place to know that they don't but think they do.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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deCypher



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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Icelander]
#20383056 - 08/06/14 02:43 PM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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Icelander said: Perhaps we should leave it to those who are enlightened to define enlightenment to the masses.
and exactly how would the unenlightened know who those "enlightened" ones are?
I've seen enough around this place to know that they don't but think they do. 
-------------------- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
 
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Deviate
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Icelander]
#20384244 - 08/06/14 06:24 PM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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Icelander said: Perhaps we should leave it to those who are enlightened to define enlightenment to the masses.
and exactly how would the unenlightened know who those "enlightened" ones are?
I've seen enough around this place to know that they don't but think they do. 
Did I say anything about knowing who the enlightened ones are? Basically waht I was saying was, as long as we feel confused and unenlightened, perhaps (and I just said perhaps, not definitely or anything) we should spend less time trying to explain and define something we really don't understand clearly yet.
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Icelander
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Deviate]
#20384334 - 08/06/14 06:35 PM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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Well then I agree. Lets quit with this creator and god stuff while we're at it for the same reasons.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: circastes]
#20390384 - 08/08/14 01:11 AM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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Definitely, that is the truth, finding yourself, at at the end of the tunnel you'll know, then you can begin to live life.
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crkhd
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Re: Untainted happiness being our nature [Re: Deviate]
#20411695 - 08/13/14 04:08 AM (9 years, 5 months ago) |
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Deviate said: This is all manifest phenomena. In fact to me this doesn't even sound like a description of enlightenment, it sounds like a description of dispassion, which one develops through spiritual practice. In enlightenment, one is beyond all this. The manifest remains but one becomes aware of the unmanifest, which is more real than the manifest. The unmanifest, is described as being pure, that is to say it is an undifferentiated whole. One part of the unmanifest isn't one way and another part another way, its all just the unmanifest. And it IS like this 24/7, it does not change, only the manifest changes. The unmanifest is before space, time, change etc. Words cannot really describe it, but one thing that all the sages seem to say is that it is very very very good. It is not a painful place to be.
I had a glimpse of this thing through kundalini awakening. When kundalini reaches your crown chakra it makes the manifest disappear completely and then you behold the unmanifest directly and unobscure by anything. The experience might last for a few minutes but supposedly the maximum length is 21 days after which death is likely. It's like a reset to that pre-birth state. I'm struck by the accuracy of your description. I guess the point of it being revealed is that it changes your perception for the rest of your life such that the unmanifest comes to the foreground and the manifest goes to the background in the sense that the mind rests with the unmanifest being the center of attention generally.
It feels like resting in deep sleep while completely awake - this is first felt during the experience and then the memory or feeling of it never ceases afterwards. I'm sure the brain is transformed in some way such that something is activated and transmitting when before there wasn't, and in the day of modern medical scanning we might be able to find out what's up for once. I've spoken to quite a few people who've experienced this, also through kundalini.
-------------------- "Everything there is, and all that there is, is a Pattern of unspeakable proportion. The Pattern contains everything that is, completely fixed in succession, all the minimal particles interconnected in every way that is. Every way that is is not every conceivable way, because not everything that can be conceived is manifest in the pattern." "THE Human, you, is a miniscule but essential part of that pattern. In it lies complete fulfillment. It will never become something it is not, but it will never need to be anything else." - Wiccan_Seeker "If boring drudgery was the way of the universe, everything would have killed itself long ago." - Spacerific
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