Jetsun

The whole idea of getting higher and higher or progressing up the chakras to eventually lead to enlightenment is not what matches up to my understanding, you can have the energy go up to the higher centres leading to high states and bliss, but there is always a coming down after, what goes up must comes down. States are always temporary and transient and by law are balanced by their opposite, which isn't the peace of recognising what is ever present. Non-duality contains it all, including duality, contains the high and low, and there is no linear progressive attainment of it because it is here right now. But the space of non-duality isn't necessarily empty in the way we regularly understand it, it can exhibit qualities, for example in Hinduism they recognise the different divine qualities of this space including the completely loving embrace of the Divine Mother or Devi, as well as the raw destructive power of Kali and many more.

In many paths man is considered a microcosm of the universe, all the forces in the universe play themselves out inside of man, is made in God's image etc. So within man you have the entirety, love, rage, anger, bliss, everything is inside of us. The ego imagines some kind of state of perfection where all the "bad" emotions are overcome and only positive ones remain, but maturity is realising that everything is inside of you including all the negative. By accepting it inside of you you stop rejecting and judging it on the outside, which is the more compassionate place to be and you also stop projecting it all out in the world as a way to avoid seeing it in yourself.

You think people chose the environment they are born in, chose the economic and political climate they grow up in and enter into as adults. Get real I guess if everyone was an objectivist and saw the world just like you everything would be fine, yeah right.. like you hold all the answers The fact is if you want a higher education, at least in the UK, you enter adult life with a minimum of £30,000 debt, probably a lot more in the USA, then if you want your own home it is almost impossible in the current climate no matter how thrifty you are without a lot of help and huge mortgage. This is the climate people inherit not one they have created. Then you get Tories who inherit most of their wealth and opportunity and have never done a proper job in their entire lives and take what they can from the state telling people that they should work hard for their wealth to earn your keep, get on your bike, that the poorest are "scroungers". One even came out yesterday that the solution to housing is for grandparents to hand over all their houses to their grandchildren. Its beyond a joke

The way to make everyone slaves these days is to get everyone in financial debt, so now you have huge university fees and huge unaffordable mortgages for life, putting you in debt as soon as you enter adulthood . Loan and debt companies are everywhere. And now it has moved on from individuals being in debt to entire countries including most of the economically advanced ones. Debt is what controls everything now, but who owns the debt? It's hard to say, the Chinese own some of it but most is owned by private institutions.

I have seen the way this is going the last ten years or so in the UK, the company I used to work for used to give yearly bonus and pay staff lunch and incentives if you do well. Now that's all gone, the government introduced minimum wage but what they don't say is that people under 16 don't have to get it, but they aren't old enough to do many of the duties required legally or physically. Plus 0 hours contracts can be abused. Staff are now searched regularly and given extra responsiblity and more stress each year for less pay, while the woman at the top received a bonus of over £5 million last year. It's becoming more and more like an Orwellian nightmare and the more inhumane the manager is the more likely they are to be promoted

Its not to deny the mind or reason at all, it is to transcend it, but as Ken Wilber says you transcend and include whatever you have transcended. So something wiser than the egoic mind is acknowledged and its intelligence utilised along with your own reason. It is to access a far wider and wiser intelligence than our own limited mind, which ultimately is liberating to the soul. The most imprisoning thing to the soul is to live exclusively in the prison of the conceptual mind.

There is a form of knowing beyond the mind, Buddhists and Hindu's call it "Prajna" or heart wisdom, direct insight into the truth of things "Prajña or Pragya (Sanskrit: प्रज्ञ) as प्रज्ञा, प्राज्ञ and प्राज्ञा is used to refer to the highest and purest form of wisdom, intelligence and understanding. Pragya is the state of wisdom which is higher than the knowledge obtained by reasoning and inference." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praj%C3%B1%C4%81_(Hinduism) Paññā (Pāli) or prajñā (Sanskrit) "wisdom", is insight in the true nature of reality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praj%C3%B1%C4%81_(Buddhism)

He is a comedian / actor, been in a few films, probably more famous for getting divorsed from the pop singer Katy Perry. For a while he started going on about a spiritual awakening in the sense of a kind of political consciousness type shift which was about being involved in grass roots activism and taking on big corporations and business while also doing things like Yoga and meditation. You could call that a spiritual type shift of some sort but I wouldn't call it the same thing as spiritual awakening as most modern spiritual teachers describe it

When you examine the space of awareness in your own experience you can't actually say that it is introverted or extroverted, active or passive, you can't find where it begins or ends, you can't find an edge, or an age or a sex, its impossible to say anything about it or pin it down in any way with the mind. All the content of consciousness arises within this space of awareness, so whatever is in consciousness can't define awareness, as consciousness is the content and awareness the context. But what can be realised experientially is that you actually are this space of awareness, in the sense it is your deeper identity because it is the only constant thing in your life, everything else is transitory including all the ideas and concepts about who we are. Such a realisation is beyond the realm of thought or the conceptual mind because thought arises within it so can't possibly define it. Hence why I said in the beginning it is beyond what anyone things about it. There is a Pali Sutra where the Buddha goes to sit by the river Ganges as a boy and then later goes back to to sit at the same spot as a old man. In the second visit it is the same river in the same spot but everything had changed, the water, the environment, the body and mind of the Buddha, all changed, yet there was one constant.

There is nothing more to learn about it from an epistomological perspective, but there is a huge amount to learn from an experiential perspective. There is what Buddhists call emptiness or the void, which is "deeper" or primary to the consciousness of the senses or of thought. The mystery is what awareness really is, and who or what we really are. Most of us spend our lives fixed on the senses and reflections in consciousness, fixated on thoughts and our ideas as a means to avoid falling into this void as a means to try to maintain our ego, like a puppy desperately trying to stay afloat in a big tank of water.

Not looking for a different one. Awareness can be aware of consciousness, therefore what it is that is aware must go deeper or be more primordial than consciousness. The first step I would say is awakening to being awareness rather than being trapped in all the transient elements of consciousness

It's not what you or I or anyone thinks it is because it is beyond thought, so whatever anyone thinks it is it isn't that, it can't be pinned down by concepts. I'm not saying what it is though, I'm saying what it's not. But yeah plenty of people have different ideas around the words spiritual awakening, people like Russell Brand talk about it in a very different way than I would in a way I wouldn't describe as awake, so it depends on the context

I am enlightened too, it is just my conditioned mind and body hasn't got the memo yet

Spiritual awakening is ... not what you think it is

The only reason why Iran is an Islamic Republic now is because the USA overthrew their democratically elected leader in the 1950's to replace with their stooge. I'm not sure bombing them to oblivion now is the best way to deal with the mess they have been instrumental in creating.

http://www.businessinsider.com/a-neuroscience-researcher-reveals-4-rituals-that-will-make-you-a-happier-person-2015-9?IR=T The whole article is worth a read, but here is a summary Here's what brain research says will make you happy: * Gratitude. Ask "What am I grateful for?" No answers? Doesn't matter. Just searching helps. * Label those negative emotions. Give it a name and your brain isn't so bothered by it. * Make decisions. Go for "good enough" instead of 'best decision ever made on Earth." * Hugs, hugs, hugs. Don't text — touch.

I think its quite a simple concept played out by governments, they need to convince you that there is something on the outside which is a greater threat to you than the governments themselves, thereby they can get away with doing whatever they want

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssgtvsGa_Pk

Such experiences can crack open rigid world views, but I wouldn't say doing Ayahuasca provides long term development. I went to Peru and did it for a few weeks and the Shaman I met did have some kind of energetic sensitivity and healing method but apart from that I wouldn't class him as particularly developed, many of the Ayahuasca Shaman are obsessed with money and women like most of the rest of the dodgy guru types. As for my experiences it is a deep cleanser on all levels, often all at once, but it's not going to be the magic bullet to enlighten people as it's sometimes advertised. It did open me up temporarily to some kind of very strange spiritual realm but I haven't been back there since. If you are somewhat sensitive and open already I don't think those experiences are needed.

In certain areas we have progressed such as technology and medicine plus there is less war and violence now, in other areas not so much, our emotional development seems to have regressed, politics has been debased to the lowest level, other areas such as art, music and literature show a decline. Depends how you measure it I guess.

Its a bit of a non story really, you can watch it here: He often jokes about peoples appearance in a light hearted way, last time Piers Morgan interviewed him he said fundamentally there was no difference between himself and Piers, except that Piers has a big nose... its just a joke

I think the "purest" way is probably Zen, as they say go straight to the emptiness and ignore all that occurs and all the scenery along the way. The advantage being that you actually get to the source, you actually get to find out who the Buddha is, but on the other hand there isn't much understanding or help along the way if you get sidetracked or the direct route isn't possible or suitable for you. You can certainly argue that the Buddha didn't use Deities himself, but there are many examples of Tibetan Buddhists using dieties the right way. The Kadampas seem to take their deity so seriously that they treat him more like a god than an aspect of Buddha nature, so I would say that is an example of how using deities can detract from practice.

Trump does seem to have Siddhi powers, as he can see the future http://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/646477/Donald-Trump-modern-Nostradamus-Tycoon-predicted-9-11-attacks-book

Think the Dalai Lama is in Belgium, then going to France. I once attended one of his teachings/empowerments a few years ago, I wasn't sensitive enough at the time to sense the different energies coming through, but I find it hard to find a more exemplary example of a Buddhist than the Dalai Lama so whatever deity energies come through they seem to support the process.