Nikolai1

You should google it - there are all sorts of weird and wonderful explanations!

Yes, you're right! Spiritual maturity is a concept I find incredibly useful. It really helps when it comes to arbitrating between levels of truth. The more mature level is always that which brings harmony, tolerance and a felt sensation of love and peace. There are many people who talk the language of religion all day long, and yet their maturity is such that their religion can never be anything other than a source of egoism and conflict. It's also a been a big realisation to me that spirituality has nothing to do with the words people say, the customs they adopt, even the actions they perform. Spirituality is about something else: you might say a subjective sense of peace and security that colours all that they do.

There are 10 different types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

What has this to do with seeing 11:11?

I guess what I was calling 'higher self' can also be called the unconscious - which is also a kind of inner clock. The 11:11 phenomenon is often of interest to spiritual people, who claim that it shows up as part of their path. Do we agree with this?

A thousand times yes!

Then your higher Self will show you it!

This happens in an instant! I can do it any moment I please. Yes I would say that. Or even better. When the chipmunk is here, the human is not. When the human is here, the chipmunk is not. I have had that feeling of being a chipmunk, but it almost immediately passes. What I am against is this notion that we must adopt a view and subscribe to it and see how far it takes us. There comes a point when you simply have to stop riding the raft. You must see that it is taking you nowhere and never has. In my life this was a moment of despair, as I have written about.

yes I said that 'you learn to see also that practice is not necessary' Then I said, in big writing: BUT DO NOT TAKE EITHER AS TRUTH!

Michael - I watched the video but to be honest I prefer my own theory. That we notice with minds that transcend the senses but at the same time 11:11 stands out because its more noticeable than 10.47 or 08.13. BTW - are you into numerology? what does NICHOLAS TIMOTHY JORDAN mean?

Seeker, Did not Buddha tell us not to take one-sided views? Do not think that some words capture the truth and some don't. Find the truth that needs no explanation. This is the truth that liberates. Not 'at some point in the future'...stop delaying, man. The concept must be dropped NOW! If you think that there is any use whatsoever in the concept then you will attach to that concept and give it value. Grasping the truth is the same as any other grasping. You must cease NOW! It means that they are equally true and equally false. Learning to see how your 'truths' might be falsehoods is an incredibly powerful practice. For example, Buddha's teaching an anatman - no-self - is so powerful because it exposes the ego as a falsehood and this is liberating. But if you attach to the no-self teaching as 'the new truth' you have swapped one poison for another and are no further forward. Abandon both! And adopt the teaching that can't be taught! This is the only substitute for conceptual truth, the only solution for the taking of opinions that conflict with other people's and at times your own. This is a contentious attitude and highly unskillful. You imagine that those who follow Buddhism are using more accurate pointers than those, like Christians, who use inaccurate pointers like the individual soul. It is sure fire recipe for strife and discord. Pure truth knows nothing of this. Find the truth which embraces all the different opinions and does not need any single one of them..This is the Bodhi-mind that you seek. What IS worth doing, is getting people to realise that there is no truth that even needs to be communicated. By communication, cultivate confusion. It is the most benevolent thing you can do for another person. Use your higher intelligence to reveal the tawdry threadbare relationship of words to the truth. If you aim for one thing, it is to stop needing to communicate. Now try to see the eightfold path as something that is already happening, regardless of what any imaginary ego is doing about it. You are looking at it as if it is something that the ego can DO. Now look at it as if there is no ego and no doing. This is the Path seen as description not prescription. Have the flexibility to see both ways. Yes fair enough. All I'm suggesting is that you learn to see also that practice is not necessary. BUT DO NOT TAKE EITHER AS TRUTH! Simply be the....what are you?...be the being who is both empowered ego taking decisive action and disempowered emptiness who is doing nothing at all.

The Noble Eighfold path is merely a description of the life that the awakened ones lead. It won't lead the unawakened anywhere, even if they were able to follow it - which they are not.

Feel quite proud that my words inspired that from you!

Explain to me why I am pooping on Buddhism?

Cheshire Cat We know form the placebo effect that If the belief in anything is strong enough it can lead to pretty dramatic healing. This is certainly the case with any Qi Gong which claims to specifically help with eyesight. It may not have worked for you, with your sceptical mind, but there is no reason to reject it unequivocally. Like I said before, healing can also occur at the physical level when a person's fundamental world view has shifted from that of an individual in time and space to a universal identity. This person does not need to be scrutinising this and that with their eyes. Their desires and inclinations are broad and embracing and so their eyes are behaving differently.

Ho 3bob, No established tradition has at any time included the transcendent teaching. All teachings are nothing other than preparatory. They are alike in their impotence before the transcendent, and therefore alike in their inaccuracy. If two falsehoods both miss the truth, then they are the same, however different the words may sound. Please don't think I'm being irreverent. The Buddha himself insisted that we take his teachings lightly. Jesus made sure that his tecahings were understood as mere parables - neither more nor less. My main objection to what you wrote was this statement: To choose one and let go the other is to elevate one, or if not elevate, then simply ignore the second. This is very dangerous and unskillful practice. Unless you hold them both together you will miss the full picture. And I promise you, if you have any serious spiritual aspiration, you will not attain it unless you accept the sheer ineffability of the transcendent and the utter uselessness of the teachings. If you believe that a teaching can be refuted by me. If you believe that is possible, then you do not understand the teaching. Most likely you are under the impression that the teachings are of some worth as statements of truth. They are not! And the sooner you realise this, the sooner you'll be able to move on. Even though a tradition may seem to have a coherent, consistent teaching, as you spiritually develop the very meanings of the words transform. You never read the same scripture twice. Your subjective resonance with the words changes with maturity. And yes, ultimately, we reach a point where Self and No-self mean subjectively the same thing - both just provisional tropes for conceptualising the unconceptualisable. It is a sure sign of spiritual immaturity to find yourself quarreling of matters of exegesis. It is a sad fact that so often those who get respected as religious scholars are very far from actual religious understanding.

Hi BES, Dreambliss no longer considers himself Christian so I hope he wasn't offended! When it comes to authentic spiritual maturity, most Christians are in the same situation as most atheists. The 'turn' towards the authentic religious life has not yet happened for them, and they are sill very much going along with the unexamined dogmas of their upbringing. When the religious turn occurs, it seems at first paradoxical, but the Christians are likely to become atheistic, and the atheists much more sympathetic to spiritual traditions. Not always but very often. Spiritual maturity is the growing realisation of your own divinity, immortaility, whatever you want to call it. The spirituallty immature, which includes most professed Christians, cannot and will not accept their own divinity. They are not seriously practicing: they cannot therefore feel in a deep experiential way what Jesus said so often: "the Kingdom of Heaven is within you". and even (in John 10:34) "ye are Gods!" They will not accept their fundamental state of sinlessness, even though the atonement is pretty much the founding dogma of the Church that Paul developed. That therefore cannot help but project divinity onto an idealised God-man figure. Even though this same figure, Jesus, said: "Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these" (John 14:12), and many other words to the same effect, they will not believe it. This airbrushed God-man is the Jesus we have all grown up with. We find it very hard to see that he got frustrated at his disciples, angry with the hypocrites, got drunk at weddings, felt fear at his own death... Whatever vibration he emitted was likely to be highly variable, as it is all people, although I do accept that his power was episodically superlative.

When Jesus came into the world, the vibration of the whole world was raised, and has stayed raised ever since. To know even that Jesus existed is a personal achievement: you have personally in that moment elevated yourself to his level. The question is: can you stay there? When the sick saw Jesus, that which was latent in themselves was elevated. It is more accurate to say that they healed themselves as it was their own holiness that they recognised as being reflected in Jesus. So, I would say that when you speak about higher vibrations, be sure to remember that higher vibration in one is simultaneously higher vibration in the all. To vibrate at a higher level is to reduce the sense of separation, in total. But... Jesus was not some perfect saint. This may be hard for Christians to swallow, but he was merely a very good example of attainment that is more common than you think. His own high vibration was a lot more vulnerable to fluctuation that people care to admit. His love was not unwavering. He lapsed in his assessment of others, and felt animosity that was reflected back to him. He was critical of the scribes and the Pharisees, his vibration fell, and so his powers went unnoticed by these among others. Much of your confusion is based on the fact that you are holding Jesus up as an example of perfection. This is immature thinking, and probably a relic of your Christian days. Best wishes!

Any authentic spiritual practice will prevent the eyesight from deteriorating. Near and far are egoic concepts, and holding these concepts obliges the eye to focus strenuously according to the beliefs of the seer. Overcoming egoism, through Qi Gong or other, allows the eyes to rest in a mild, relaxed gaze which is broad, expansive and sees near and far as one and the same thing. This is hugely beneficial to the eye. Holding strict beliefs about the reality of near and far is what hurts the eye. But is is also harmful to hold strict beliefs about the nature of your own eyesight prescription. Although excessive egoic focus strains the eyes, wearing glasses weakens the eye muscles and causes them to atrophise. Best way is to follow your practice and wear glasses as little as possible.

When you understand truth, you naturally pass it on. No vow is necessary, in reality. Sorry I don't understand what you are saying about 3bob?

The full realisation is simply not thinking about it anymore. The teaching Is no longer needed once self and no-self are understood as the same.

If you ever go into a situation thinking 'is my charisma showing?' then that you will guarantee that you come across as uncharismatic. Charisma is a pure open giving, and is entirely free of self-consciousness. Any book will almost certainly backfire. To read a book is to desire the outcome. To desire the outcome is to check for the outcome. To check for the outcome is very uncharismatic. Just be charismatic is my advice!

It helps enormously if you imagine one of the two selves to have a capital S. Self and self. The transcendent Self state is totally and utterly ineffable. Indeed, each attempt to describe it, is itself, part of the transcendent. Words happen within it, they cannot refer to it. But, the flow of reality has us using one word or other. God, Tao, Self, Buddha-nature are all synonymous. Buddha taught no-self, but he did not teach no-Self. Why is the confusing word Self used to describe that which is transcendent of the ego? Because when we realise the transcendent we see that it still has the fundamental feeling of being, of identity, of selfhood. This does not go away. And this aspect is entirely shared with the feeling of small egoic selfhood. When we self-realise, we realise that we always were self-realised. Or to use another synonym. When we gain Buddha-nature, we realise that we already were Buddha-nature. It is incredibly confusing to the mind, but becomes crystal clear once we have discovered a faculty of understanding that replaces the intellect. If you do not have this new capacity, it will be literally impossible to grasp. The intellect can not deal with a statement like 'there is a self and simultaneously not a self'. But to the self-realised this becomes overwhelmingly the most accurate, comprehensive, and satisfying truth statement that can be made. If you want a good technique for discovering this new faculty, then pure shikantaza style meditation is it. This alone has the power to disable the intellect. All other practices rely heavily on the intellect and so inadvertently strengthen it. the aim is to experience pure unalloyed being, pure awareness. This gives us all the perspective we need in order to understand.

Refuted by their teachings was I? Refutation is the kind of thing the intellect believes in. You need to somehow see beyond the teachings. All I can do is tell you that you're not there yet.

Hi 3bob, When teachings seem to contradict each other it is always at the logical level. Some new faculty of understanding is required if one is to reconcile the seemingly obvious paradox of 'teachings of self and no-self are both true'. Once this faculty is discovered then the paradox is transformed to the understanding, and paradoxical words become the clearest and most accurate way of describing the truth. The Buddha's doctrine of anatman refers specifically to independent self-existence. We all imagine things to exist independently of ourselves in this world. Buddha's anatman teaching simple points out that the opposite is also true;: that nothing has independent self-existence. The actual truth he wanted everyone to get is the truth of the Middle Way, where neither argument is adhered to and something ineffable is grasped. What knows all this? What knows not to adhere to either argument and to adhere to the Middle Way is what Buddha called Buddha-nature. Buddha-nature is a pure synonym of the Vedic term Self. Buddha therefore taught no-self (with small s) in order that we come to understand Self (with a big S) All this is made very clear in the Mahayana-Mahaparinirvana-Sutra, where Buddha explains that those of lesser intelligence cannot see that the No-self argument obtains only at the level of samsara. The doctor in the parable told the mother to smear bile on her breasts to stop the child from feeding. This action the Buddha compares to his no-self teaching, and is used to dissuade people from holding materialist views. When the child is well the mother cleans the bile from her breasts and lets the milk flow. Though the child may believe that the breast is bitter, he must be induced to take the milk. Likewise, though the people may imagine the teaching of no-self to be the truth, they must be encouraged to go beyond and understand the superior truth of Buddha-Nature. 3bob, if intelligence is the only faculty of understanding you possess, you won't be able to help but see Self and No-Self teachings as contradictory. The best remedy for intellectual fixation is time spent in pure sitting meditation, but the motivation must come from you.