johndoe2012

Sudden enlightenment doesn't work because the human psyche is too complex to revert to the natural state. It might work for one person but average folks need more work. Releasing just one emotion can take a toll on the psyche, so releasing 1000 emotions plus being integrated afterwards is not possible in real life. If you instead focus on feeling good in the present then quickly you stop worrying about enlightenment because you are feeling good, why worry about something in the future? It also stops the psyche from blaming others etc because you quickly see that the psyche generates suffering so the solution is very close to home.

There is a clear description of enlightenment from Ramesh Balsekar: the end of suffering, the end of uncomfortable sensations in the body. The uncomfortable sensations are caused by the identity that calls itself 'me', thus the end of 'me' is enlightenment. Another stage, which is mentioned in Actualism, is the end of all instinctual passions. Ramesh Balsekar was apparently ok with anger which I personally see as a symptom of aggression. But it depends on what you call anger. I find a good marker of progress to be silence of mind and tension in the body. Both things anyone can feel internally, so not mystical at all. Namkhai Norbu said the state of rigpa was lack of difference between you and an object, something I have not achieved myself so cannot talk about it. I only had glimpses so far.

This is simply wrong. Drinking cannabis tea (less than 0.5 g) results in more complete relaxation than any qigong I have tried so best to judge by yourself. And it feels so much more natural where qigong feels artificial and forced. It is a question of chemistry in the brain (search for cannabinoid receptors). Qigong manipulates energy that is then supposed to change the chemistry. My experience is that it doesn't work that way and cannabis tea works so much better that I was completely amazed by its results.

There are two types of thoughts: "bla bla" automatic thoughts that cause suffering, and planning / calculating etc thoughts that do not cause suffering. The first type is the one to eliminate, eliminating the second makes you non-functional.

The Union of Three Hearts from Sheng Zhen is a super simple meditation giving good results. So far it feels better due to not invoking "the feeling-being" which meditating on the lower dantian does (in my body). The feeling-being is all about the "me, my self and I" structure and meditating in the middle of the head cuts that off completely starving the feeling-being away. So a quick way to realization of no-mind I think.

Huang Po: "There is no truth, beware even of this truth". Trump uses the first part to steer people to his version of the truth. There is also the thing about psychics, that do no fit into the world of fact-checkers because humanity is still suppressing psychic information. So conspiracy theories are more attractive because they rely on the UNSEEN. I see this "war" between psychics and non-psychics as yet another play God has written to make evolution go forward.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/ We have not evolved to see objective reality because then we would have been extinct. Thus we live in a human generated reality however some of the things we live by are real in a sense like gravity. So the human is built for generating its own version of reality hence conspiracy theories can proliferate.

There is active Russian disinformation going on using people's dislike for anything to destabilize society. More chaos equals freer movement for Putin and friends. Then there is also growing up in a society where money is the object of desire fueled by American social media. The hyper focus on lack and the overly simplistic tools on how to fix that lack: cars, houses, career, 'the secret'. After some time you get the feeling 'the system is rigged' and 'somebody is controlling the system' which it is in a way. Basically the young ones are inherenting a system that is exploiting and controlling them, at least that is one way of interpretating the gravitation towards conspiracy theories. Also I think the current way of using facts to shut down how people feel about things is counterproductive. If people still feel the system is rigged then surely those facts have not solved the real issue? The fact checking way relies on suppression of feelings and so-called 'scientific evidence' rather than a resolution of said feelings.

I think the idolization of teachers usually come from liking the teachers energy or personality rather than actual results. If you measure where people are in terms of quietness of mind, and nondual awareness then numbers will tell you something else I would presume. I have idolized teachers in the past, but when I look on actual results then it was a combination of things that paid off. I listened to a call where Adyashanti had students calling in and I could hear confusion because people didn't know what to look for and Adyashanti couldn't correct them. It was more of a making people feel good call it seemed from my perspective.

Courses on Sheng Zhen online are free at the moment https://shengzhen.online I tried enrolling in the Awakening the Soul course and felt the transmissions of the contemplations and the Qigong, powerful and shifted some deep blocks in my system. Also the Union of Three Hearts seem powerful, a big light in the center of my head appeared.

Forget you have a self includes forgetting others have a self and then there is only the functioning of the Tao, nobody doing it.

Search for 'feldenkrais free mp3s' and do the exercises even if they are not related to the area you are targeting. Another way is body scanning where you scan the body up and down. Search for 'Goenka body scanning' for the instructions.

Find your objections to the notion that you are already the Self and remove them, see what remains.

Inner alchemy that only focuses on the body could lead to a biased perspective. Reading TTC and other Taoist works, eg this one: is good for refining the mind. If you just sit Zuowang / Zen style, the Tao will present itself each moment since this is all there is.

It seems freeform is under some sort of delusion that spiritual teachers are saints, a direct manifestation of God and always are polite, always do the right thing etc. Who told you so? Nisargadatta got angry. So did Ramana Maharshi. So did Buddha Shakyamuni. If a Dao Bum met these today, they would be called "not ready, charlatans, fakes". Nobody can do anything different than they are doing right now. This moment is it. The problem is the thinking mind wants things to be different, it cannot accepts things as they are. Then suffering arises and the doer runs after it and gets upset "No! Things got to change! I cannot accept this!!!".

.

Find the doer of action and see if anything changes.

This is seeing your own nature, you can recognize it from Harding's Headless experiments or from Dzogchen pointing-out instructions (just examples). Seeing this may satisfy you and rid yourself of all earthly desires in a full swoop if that is your destiny.

Seeing into your nature directly is one way of gaining certainty. Resting in Being (Heart) is another way. There is feeling-access to it behind the heart chakra and back, dive in and stay. There is feeling of Existence independent of everything else. For your actions just do whatever you feel like doing, not feeling like a slave, but what you really want.

That someone is not following the Dao is a incorrect idea. That at a certain point in your life you 'suddenly' turned away from Dao and followed not-Dao. It comes from believing the appearances we see in life and take them to be real. Since there is only the Dao nobody can follow the not-Dao. The not-Dao is just another name for Dao, it is an appearance. So nothing to worry about. Everything is already pure perfection right now.

Have no expectations of anything specific to happen, then how can things go wrong?

Thinking mind = automatic thoughts that cause suffering. Enlightenment = end of suffering in Buddhism. No suffering = end of that type of thinking. Anyone thinking of gaining lots of money in spirituality is obviously still under the influence of strong egoic desires. And desire is the root of suffering, so this person still has heavy suffering going on.

Imagine letting a deity or avatar fill your body, either as an overlay or in your body. Ask them to heal what you want fixed. Last step is to integrate your system. This can used on anything, an illness, chakras, meridians etc etc.

Not sure if this has been posted before, but this is a jewel, pure gold

Sounds new agey and like wishful thinking. An enlighted person cannot gain a million dollar instantly, an enlighted person is just a person with the thinking mind destroyed and they no longer believe in free will as normal people do.