stirling

You are the nail in this scenario? I don’t think of you that way. I think you are more of a “get off my lawn “ type with a heart of gold. ❤️

Certainly Britney Spears, Ronald Reagan, the Teletubbies, Jesus, every tree, rock, gust of wind, and rash are all Brahman. No-one/thing gets a pass - they are all Brahman/Dharmakaya and aren't separate from what you are. This is one-hundred percent correct, though I wouldn't use the term integration, myself. There is nothing separate to integrate, really. I think of it more as sloughing off your belief systems and patterns of behavior - the "I" that you so carefully build and buttress moment to moment. Yes, the fabric of the dharmakaya/Brahman loves you, and shows you where you are stuck constantly as a kindness. Learning to release attachment and aversion to these appearances and events in consciousness is the work. Hahahaha! We call that a "dharma dream". That's good! The Advaita Vedantans wisely suggest that the dreamworld is actually MORE real that this world, because it already lacks some of the illusions of division. Time is strange in dreams, space is strange in dreams, and, as you have seen, "self" is strange in dreams. They are fluid, and don't follow our waking ideas about their behavior. The reality is that THIS world is the same. Time, space and "self" are wiggly and interesting when allowed to be as they are. It can be seen when you stop explaining away the weird experiences you have, like forgetting the connecting moments between two points when walking, or driving, or seeing something weird out of the corner of your eye, but explaining it as some anomaly in consciousness, rather than the glitch it obviously was. Learning to accept reality as strange and not needing your explanation begets MORE of these experiences being noticed. BTW the mystery "Robert" here is none-other than our friendly board-mate oldbob.

I feel like we are back to square one. I'm not doing or saying anything that William James, Aldous Huxley, and Joseph Campbell (for a start) haven't, so I'm not sure why you have always singled ME out. This IS a thread about enlightenment, yes? With that in mind 'll share a quote I made previously: As I have previously explained, there are the monastics (dualistic) and the gnostics/heretics (non-dualistic). Everything in a monastics belief system is great until the day that there is insight. From that moment on, that "person's" life will never be the same. The world has a new heretic. Enlightenment is not a belief, and burns all beliefs to ashes. People can believe what they like. Experience is ultimately what transforms all views. Sure there are branches of Hinduism that believe that BELIEVE that those teachings are dual or non-dual. My feeling is that some of those traditions have simply chosen an awkward way to express the same understanding. The Hindu texts are chock full of amazing non-dual statements and insight. Would it make you feel more respected if I said that interpretations of the non-dual Hindu texts differ, but the non-dual schools are most certainly talking about enlightenment being the same attainment as other non-dual schools?

Patronizing from me? Oh... gosh no! I'm a FAN. I am deeply against exceptionalism of all kinds. I guess I thought my position was clear - these traditions all point to the same non-dual understanding. There is a long history of people like William James, Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell and other well known intellectual minds connecting the dots here... there is nothing radical or odd about pointing it out. It is certainly beyond obvious to me.

I think you would be hard pressed, myself. Absolutely. If you read Meister Eckhardt, St. John of the Cross, or Bernadette Roberts, there plenty of obvious non-dual statements. I have heard pointing out in Sufism too. Same deal. Agreed.

True, but I think Suzuki's quote gets the point of practice across. The more obscurations and "self" we chip away, and the more loving kindness we show in the world the more likely the "accident" is to take place. Relaxed, unhurried, realized dharma teachers ARE in "meditation" all the time. You could call a lot of them lazy too, I suppose.

Soto Zen. My lineage is through the late Shunryu Suzuki, who said: Confusing the practice, or the teachings with the realization is a common mistake. Both point to the destination, but the idea that we are "going" anywhere is incorrect. The destination is right here, always. As I said previously, the map is not the territory. It is all (including the chap called Robert) ALWAYS Brahman, and always has been.

Experiences are ALWAYS different - the concomitant understanding is not. It is also not transcendental. There is nothing to transcend.

Prajna is most important siddhi by far, and the father of all other true siddhis, from my perspective.

When we meditate and the mind has moments of stillness what we experience IS enlightened mind, only not seen at its full depth. Where the mind has the spaciousness and lack of conceptual overlay, things are unencumbered by our thinking minds story of reality. "Will" is tricky to discuss, but I'll give you my take: When the mind is still, the world can be seen to be a play of light and color. For a moment our thoughts about how reality is drop away. We can see that moment to moment reality is bubbling up from "emptiness". A bird flickers by outside. The sun makes it slow progress along the floor. There is a tickle in your leg. There is a sudden wave of bliss. All of these things happen, but the objects - the bird, the sun the leg, the bliss - arise in consciousness and pass from experience without our thinking mind analyzing, or engaging with them. We can see this in meditation, but fail to recognize that things are actually ALWAYS like this, even when our mind is busy. We also fail to see that one of the things that flickers into existence in the mind then disappears are our thoughts. Sometimes something happens in the world and a thought arises in response. That response is, itself, the product of how our mind is conditioned, but isn't "I". It is just like everything else, it comes, it goes, it doesn't belong to you. "Will" is just this, your response in this moment, colored and conditioned by the circumstances you are experiencing, and not yours. Will is impersonal. This is how things are in my experience. Another good piece of advice was to learn to temporarily adopt beliefs then drop them. Since beliefs are always fictions, learning to see that they are fluid and ultimately do not represent reality is a useful skill.

Bob, I'm not talking about the lineages, schools, or doctrines, I am talking about the actual EXPERIENCE and understanding of enlightenment. All of those things are about the STORY of enlightenment and will obviously disagree in some way or another... enlightenment itself can't be described and has nothing to do with all of that man-made nonsense. There often two traditions in many religions - the monastics and the gnostics. A gnostic is someone who has had sudden and permanent insight in the the nature of reality. The "gnow" what enlightenment is and it is their moment to moment experience. In time they tell others, and people get excited and write it all down, including the gnostics story about how he got there. However, those who write it down fail to realize that the path they have captured isn't going to work for everyone, at least in the same way. The gnostics KNOW this. Time passes... some students follow the instructions and some percentage of those students experience gnosis, but their path differs in some, or many, details from the original gnostic because the path doesn't go the same for everyone one. They tell their story. The monastics label this new gnostic a heretic, but the gnostic/heretic NOW has the insight to realize what all gnostic/heretics realize - the map is NOT the territory. This is why there are so many "Buddhisms", for example. Each one had it's own heretic that began it.

Lacking the usual vitriol, which is nice. Can you show me where? From where I am sitting it's "turtles all the way down", and I don't think I'm alone on the board here in seeing that. The statements I quoted are amongst probably hundreds one could pull (yes, in context) that support my point.

Something my own teacher said once, and I hear repeated over and over again is that those on the path who compulsively act for the good of all sentient beings end up being "taken care of", most recently Khandro Kunzang Dechen in a recent podcast I heard. Her version of it has the "dharma protectors" doing it. While I have empowerments, I think it is true for anyone on this path, protectors or not. The work of truly cutting through the delusion of separateness and acting with the intention of kindness, and as little clinging and aversion as one can muster is rewarded with a more loving, beautiful, dream-like reality. It manifests something like a siddhi - regular little miracles of generosity of (relative) wealth, health, fulfillment of aims related to the spread of wisdom. It's just crazy. If it was really safe I'd go into a list I would but, suffice to say, things are provided and there is great gratitude.

Seems like he has it to me: Why does that sound familiar... oh yes: Or: "self" is just a little bit of Self, but they aren't separate... that is an illusion. It's ALL Self, Bob, including every little bit of it that you imagine is separate somehow. Nothing gets a pass.

I had quick, and immense success with summoning my Holy Guardian Angel, believe it or not. Part of it is that my existing visionary experience events are already photorealistic and 3 dimensional, so summoning this particular "being" seemed completely possible. As you say, how possible it seems (and how able you are to adopt or have absolutely NO belief system) DOES seem to make a big impact. Haven't really tried anything else honestly... most of the rest (manipulating for money/love/etc.) isn't of interest to me.