dwai

My experience has been that we are essentially a continuum of energy. The more condensed clouds of energy are "beings" like you and me. We are all made up of the same "stuff"....like jonesboy put it. The only other thing that is stark is a field/pool of energy my teacher calls "Gravity". At a certain phenomenal level, it seems to be made up of mainly gravity and this condensate/energy floating above this gravity pool....

After "enlightenment", one has to maintain the practices that helped keep one aligned in the right direction. The Buddha too meditated regularly after reaching his buddha-hood. All Rishis maintained their meditations/practices, the Daoist masters continued to practice daoist meditations, and so on.

The "my body" makes it abundantly clear. The body is mine, but I am not my body. Just as the jeans and shirt I wear are mine, but they are not me...they belong to me.

Aka wildfire

Understand what the Dao is not Understand what you are not Become aware and let that which you are, and that which the Dao is, be

Because when our stomach is full, it can induce sleep instead of meditation

That made me laugh

I think it is also related to the Spring energy.

I had me a thought one day... I had to find my self I said. I set off on an adventure... Shook off that feeling of impending death. I read the books, I asked the wise... I felt compelled to fight the tide. The words they said, "do this", "do that"... The wise looked at me and smiled. They told me "stop your seeking"... "That which you look for, you can't find in outside". I didn't understand what they meant... On their wisdom I could not rely. So I looked for “IT”, here and there... tried to find it everywhere. It eluded me, o despair... it just didn't seem fair! When I sat down, tired and half-dead... A thought arose in my mind. Who is it that seeks the self? Who is behind this thought in my head? I looked again, but couldn't find... It wasn't in my body, it wasn't in my head. it wasn't in my senses, or even in my mind... Who was it that was looking? When I finally stopped looking, the mind took a break... In that stillness, was the fountainhead. That which I sought, was nowhere to be found... Because it was not a thing at all.

That you are becoming aware of and are willing to face your emotional demons is a sign of maturity in practice, imho. Sometime during my tai chi practice - perhaps 6-7 years into the practice, I started becoming acutely aware of the contents of my mind -- emotional and mental stuff that repeatedly appeared and disappeared. I think most of us create an idealized image of who we are "supposed to be" -- a perfect being, with no flaws, no weaknesses, all based on romanticized ideals supported by our society (and its literature, concepts of good and bad, right and wrong, etc). Some cultures consider sex to be "sin", have over-idealized notions of the self-sacrificing saintly person, the absolutely devoted child, parent, sibling, friend etc. You know the rules by now, I'm sure...and so we prop up this self-image. Once we start to become aware of the contents of our mind -- stuff that pulls us, pushes us, drives us, makes us cautious (not necessarily bad stuff per se), the first reaction is to be shocked at how different it is from the idealized self-image we built and tried to prop up. At least in my case it was. I tortured myself for years, with guilt, self-loathing, depression and became a social recluse of sorts, with my wife, my teacher, my tai chi friends and my family as my primary source of human contact and interaction (and the Daobums too, in a more indirect manner). Work was too, but there is hardly any higher emotional contact in that respect...work has, in my experience been a source of more artifice being piled upon our hapless selves. Until one day, I realized that when I was observing the contents of my mind, I never checked to ask, who is it that is observing this? If "I" am observing these thoughts, these repressed emotions, etc, then while these thoughts might belong to me, they were not "Me" (not sure if that makes sense). When a degree of detachment was established in this, it became a clinical process of observing the mind content. At first I tried to "exorcise" these demons. But the more I tried to "deal" with them, the more they seem to grow in strength. Then my teachers and some wise folks (some of the wise bums on this forum too), told me to consider letting the mind-stuff just rise and fall. The more I detached and just observed the mind-stuff, the less power it seemed to have over "me". Soon, I learnt that the mind-stuff is a result of our environment (and depends on what we consume with our mind and senses). Just like eating junk food is going to mess up your digestion, consuming "junk stuff" is going to mess up your mind. Your mind does not define you or control you, any more than your diet defines or controls you. Though, addiction to certain types of mind-food can be as dramatic and damaging as addiction to certain types of junk foods can be. The detachment between you the observer and your mind/body is a key to dealing with these demons, in my experience. And it is a constant process of refinement, till we reach a point when there is not much mind-stuff rising (and when it does, it dissipates fast). We go from a cloudy and stormy sky (noisy mind) to a mainly clear sky with the rare fluffs of cloud and occasional thunderstorms (still mind) ...

This is relevant to discussions with both Jeff and Jonesboy.

The how is to become awakened, to be Present, remain in the here and now. Did you try that meditation led by Rupert spira? It is very powerful and following it regularly (everyday) with no preconceptions but purely feeling, you can enter into the here and now. If you let it mature by staying with the "I am", the futility of positions will become apparent not just intellectually but practically as well. Then you will see that the choices of holding positions or not become so easy, you'll think "wow! Is there all that is to it!?"

They would if they were awake too

Sukha and dukkha are not due to external circumstances. They are due to our holding on to positions this is good, that is bad; I want good and avoid bad; and so on. It is a mental game entirely. Real sukha is absence of striving for sukha. When we stop striving for sukha and stop avoiding dukkha, we are sukha itself.

Illusory MH does exist in an illusory world because we interact with him. Ultimately however, you, me, MH and every other "sentient being" are just one consciousness, without a second.

Because I know that which is not the mind, which is not the body, but both mind and body belong to it.

An illusory dwai, walked into an illusory tree and got an illusory broken nose. It is no different from a sleeping dream. Only thing is, we are afraid for this waking dream to end, thinking it is the end of us. It is not...when we die, we just wake up from the waking dream

Actually traditional Advaita Vedanta is quite effective in the results. The problem is that the practitioners tend to get bogged down in tradition for the sake of tradition, liken it to Confucian ethics get mistaken for daoist idealism (crappy labels but that's what I can use since I don't have much time now).

This is not ego. It is a fact...our sentience is what gives the universe existence. It doesn't have to be human sentience either, just sentience, period. We have bought into a relatively new idea (materialism), hook, line and sinker. This is not the position of the ancients (Hindu, Daoist, Greeks). There awareness had primacy. Because that is the predicate without which the phenomenal universe cannot be experienced.

If you or I don't exist, how do we know if there exists a self-aware Apech?

Where it is, doesn't really matter. What matters is that It is known to YOU. True or false are judgements you ascribe to a description of something, is it not?