Is enlightenment really desirable?

[Stosh]

The straw dog thing relates to a ritual, and the point is to remember the dichotomy between the material symbol and the spiritual content , are also simultaneously presented. 

Honor the man for his position , though he may be a jerk , honor the soul of the man though he may be impoverished , ,, any permutation works. 

[Starjumper]

13 hours ago, Lost in Translation said:

May I ask what book you found this in? 

 

Sorry, I don't read books anymore.  I copied this from a Spanish speaking Taoism group on FB, and no book was listed with it.

 

Edit: unless this is a book:

 

Edited November 1, 2017 by Starjumper

[Lost in Translation]

1 hour ago, Starjumper said:

 

Sorry, I don't read books anymore.  I copied this from a Spanish speaking Taoism group on FB, and no book was listed with it.

 

Edit: unless this is a book:

 

 

Thank you! I have a couple Deng Ming-Dao books around here. This might make a good addition to the collection.

[Spotless]

On 10/30/2017 at 7:25 AM, Starjumper said:

Once a person experiences enlightenment the foundational realization they have is about the importance of Slack, part of which is distancing yourself from the normals!   Let's face it, most people are anal jerks, racing each other to be first to the slaughterhouse, and taking you along with them! (@ 2:25).  This video explains it well and contains the wisdom and realizations of the ages.  

 

 

Good friends of mine put this together - fun to hear Hal's voice! Doug and others!

Old stuff!

Edited November 1, 2017 by Spotless

[Starjumper]

On 10/25/2017 at 10:06 PM, ljazztrumpet said:

Yep, although I think things like meditation (and qi gong) are great practices, I find Life doesn't find that absolutely necessary to 'get you'. These things you mention all just happen anyway. Although I think these practices do accelerate things.

 

BTW, it's not the 'best way'! I haven't figured that one out yet!

 

If by 'these things' you are referring to the introspection that results in cleansing a persons karma then that could be possible without meditation, but still I think it requires a quiet introspective life similar to unofficial meditation because most people fill their lives with distractions in order to not look there because it is uncomfortable.  If by 'these things' you also include enlightenment then that is also possible without formal meditation and chi kung practice.  I refer you to the book "Path Notes of an American Ninja Master" by Glen Morris.  In it he states that the ratio of enlightenment among meditators is the same as among non meditators, which is about one in a million.  However the ratio of enlightenment among meditators who are also warriors is a thousand times higher, one in a thousand.

 

I don't know how or where he got these numbers from, but going along with the concept, what is it that makes the difference when you add warrior to meditation?   Meditation + Warrior.  (he uses the term martial artist but I prefer warrior).

Edited November 5, 2017 by Starjumper
change ration to ratio

[9th]

10 minutes ago, Starjumper said:

I don't know how or where he got these numbers from, but going along with the concept, what is it that makes the difference when you add warrior to meditation?   Meditation + Warrior.  (he uses the term martial artist but I prefer warrior).

 

Good question.

 

On 1/12/2011 at 5:48 PM, 9th said:

btw - this one will be challenging for those with attention deficit disorder, or those who don't have enough free time...

Every bit of knowledge that becomes power has death as its central force. Death lends the ultimate touch and whatever is touched by death indeed becomes power.

 

A man who follows the paths of sorcery is confronted with imminent annihilation every turn of the way, and unavoidably he becomes keenly aware of his death. Without the awareness of death he would be only an ordinary man involved in ordinary acts. He would lack the necessary potency, the necessary concentration that transforms one's ordinary time on earth into magical power.

 

 

Thus to be a warrior a man has to be, first of all, and rightfully so, keenly aware of his own death. But to be concerned with death would force any one of us to focus on the self and that would be debilitating. So the next thing one needs to be a warrior is detachment. The idea of imminent death, instead of becoming an obsession, becomes an indifference.

 

Now you must detach yourself; detach yourself from everything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he is incapable of abandoning himself to anything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he can't deny himself anything. A man of that sort, however, does not crave, for he has acquired a silent lust for life and for all things of life. He knows his death is stalking him and won't give him time to cling to anything, so he tries, without craving, all of everything.

 

 

A detached man, who knows he has no possibility of fencing off his death, has only one thing to back himself with: the power of his decisions. He has to be, so to speak, the master of his choices. He must fully understand that his choice is his responsibility and once he makes it there is no longer time for regrets or recriminations. His decisions are final, simply because his death does not permit him time to cling to anything.

 

And thus with an awareness of his death, with his detachment, and with the power of his decisions a warrior sets his life in a strategical manner. The knowledge of his death guides him and makes him detached and silently lusty; the power of his final decisions makes him able to choose without regrets and what he chooses is always strategically the best; and so he performs everything he has to with gusto and lusty efficiency.

 

When a man behaves in such a manner one may rightfully say that he is a warrior and has acquired patience. When a warrior has acquired patience he is on his way to will. He knows how to wait. His death sits with him on his mat, they are friends. His death advises him, in mysterious ways, how to choose, how to live strategically. And the warrior waits! I would say that the warrior learns without any hurry because he knows he is waiting for his will; and one day he succeeds in performing something ordinarily quite impossible to accomplish. He may not even notice his extraordinary deed. But as he keeps on performing impossible acts, or as impossible things keep on happening to him, he becomes aware that a sort of power is emerging. A power that comes out of his body as he progresses on the path of knowledge. He notices that he can actually touch anything he wants with a feeling that comes out of his body from a spot right below or right above his navel. That feeling is the will, and when he is capable of grabbing with it, one can rightfully say that the warrior is a sorcerer, and that he has acquired will.

 

A man can go still further than that; a man can learn to see. Upon learning to see he no longer needs to live like a warrior, nor be a sorcerer. Upon learning to see a man becomes everything by becoming nothing. He, so to speak, vanishes and yet he's there. I would say that this is the time when a man can be or can get anything he desires. But he desires nothing, and instead of playing with his fellow men like they were toys, he meets them in the midst of their folly. The only difference between them is that a man who sees controls his folly, while his fellow men can't. A man who sees has no longer an active interest in his fellow men. Seeing has already detached him from absolutely everything he knew before.

 

 

- Castaneda

https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/17127-will-power/?do=findComment&comment=407063

 

 

A man of knowledge is one who has followed truthfully the hardships of learning, a man who has, without rushing or without faltering, gone as far as he can in unraveling the secrets of power and knowledge. To become a man of knowledge one must challenge and defeat the four natural enemies inside him.

 

When a man starts to learn, he is never clear about his objectives. His purpose is faulty; his intent is vague. He hopes for rewards that will never materialize for he knows nothing of the hardships of learning. He slowly begins to learn--bit by bit at first, then in big chunks. And his thoughts soon clash. What he learns is never what he pictured, or imagined, and so he begins to be afraid. Learning is never what one expects. Every step of learning is a new task, and the fear the man is experiencing begins to mount mercilessly, unyieldingly. His purpose becomes a battlefield.

 

And thus he has stumbled upon the first of his natural enemies: Fear! A terrible enemy--treacherous, and difficult to overcome. It remains concealed at every turn of the way, prowling, waiting. And if the man, terrified in its presence, runs away, his enemy will have put an end to his quest and he will never learn. He will never become a man of knowledge. He will perhaps be a bully, or a harmless, scared man; at any rate, he will be a defeated man. His first enemy will have put an end to his cravings. It is not possible for a man to abandon himself to fear for years, then finally conquer it. If he gives in to fear he will never conquer it, because he will shy away from learning and never try again. But if he tries to learn for years in the midst of his fear, he will eventually conquer it because he will never have really abandoned himself to it.

 

Therefore he must not run away. He must defy his fear, and in spite of it he must take the next step in learning, and the next, and the next. He must be fully afraid, and yet he must not stop. That is the rule! And a moment will come when his first enemy retreats. The man begins to feel sure of himself. His intent becomes stronger. Learning is no longer a terrifying task.

 

When this joyful moment comes, the man can say without hesitation that he has defeated his first natural enemy. It happens little by little, and yet the fear is vanquished suddenly and fast. Once a man has vanquished this kind of fear, he is free from it for the rest of his life because, instead of fear, he has acquired clarity--a clarity of mind which erases fear. By then a man knows his desires; he knows how to satisfy those desires. He can anticipate the new steps of learning and a sharp clarity surrounds everything. The man feels that nothing is concealed.

 

And thus he has encountered his second enemy: Clarity! That clarity of mind, which is so hard to obtain, dispels fear, but also blinds. It forces the man never to doubt himself. It gives him the assurance he can do anything he pleases, for he sees clearly into everything. And he is courageous because he is clear, and he stops at nothing because he is clear. But all that is a mistake; it is like something incomplete. If the man yields to this make-believe power, he has succumbed to his second enemy and will be patient when he should rush. And he will fumble with learning until he winds up incapable of learning anything more. His second enemy has just stopped him cold from trying to become a man of knowledge. Instead, the man may turn into a buoyant warrior, or a clown. Yet the clarity for which he has paid so dearly will never change to darkness and fear again. He will be clear as long as he lives, but he will no longer learn, or yearn for, anything.

 

He must do what he did with fear: he must defy his clarity and use it only to see, and wait patiently and measure carefully before taking new steps; he must think, above all, that his clarity is almost a mistake. And a moment will come when he will understand that his clarity was only a point before his eyes. And thus he will have overcome his second enemy, and will arrive at a position where nothing can harm him anymore. This will not be a mistake. It will not be only a point before his eyes. It will be true power.

 

He will know at this point that the power he has been pursuing for so long is finally his. He can do with it whatever he pleases. His ally is at his command. His wish is the rule. He sees all that is around him. But he has also come across his third enemy: Power! Power is the strongest of all enemies. And naturally the easiest thing to do is to give in; after all, the man is truly invincible. He commands; he begins by taking calculated risks, and ends in making rules, because he is a master.

 

A man at this stage hardly notices his third enemy closing in on him. And suddenly, without knowing, he will certainly have lost the battle. His enemy will have turned him into a cruel, capricious man, but he will never lose his clarity or his power.

 

A man who is defeated by power dies without really knowing how to handle it. Power is only a burden upon his fate. Such a man has no command over himself, and cannot tell when or how to use his power. Once one of these enemies overpowers a man there is nothing he can do. It is not possible, for instance, that a man who is defeated by power may see his error and mend his ways. Once a man gives in he is through. If, however, he is temporarily blinded by power, and then refuses it, his battle is still on. That means he is still trying to become a man of knowledge. A man is defeated only when he no longer tries, and abandons himself.

 

He has to come to realize that the power he has seemingly conquered is in reality never his. He must keep himself in line at all times, handling carefully and faithfully all that he has learned. If he can see that clarity and power, without his control over himself, are worse than mistakes, he will reach a point where everything is held in check. He will know then when and how to use his power. And thus he will have defeated his third enemy.

 

The man will be, by then, at the end of his journey of learning, and almost without warning he will come upon the last of his enemies: Old age! This enemy is the cruelest of all, the one he won't be able to defeat completely, but only fight away. This is the time when a man has no more fears, no more impatient clarity of mind--a time when all his power is in check, but also the time when he has an unyielding desire to rest. If he gives in totally to his desire to lie down and forget, if he soothes himself in tiredness, he will have lost his last round, and his enemy will cut him down into a feeble old creature. His desire to retreat will overrule all his clarity, his power, and his knowledge.

 

But if the man sloughs off his tiredness, and lives his fate though, he can then be called a man of knowledge, if only for the brief moment when he succeeds in fighting off his last, invincible enemy. That moment of clarity, power, and knowledge is enough.

 

- Castaneda

 

 

[Lost in Translation]

3 hours ago, Starjumper said:

However the ratio of enlightenment among meditators who are also warriors is a thousand times higher, one in a thousand.

 

What is the ratio among warriors who are not meditators?

 

Warriors place themselves in situations that can end their lives in a instant. Such situations demand living in the moment. Anything else is sure path to destruction. Perhaps it is the living-in-the-moment that leads to enlightenment?

[9th]

[Jeff]

On 11/4/2017 at 9:20 AM, Starjumper said:

 

If by 'these things' you are referring to the introspection that results in cleansing a persons karma then that could be possible without meditation, but still I think it requires a quiet introspective life similar to unofficial meditation because most people fill their lives with distractions in order to not look there because it is uncomfortable.  If by 'these things' you also include enlightenment then that is also possible without formal meditation and chi kung practice.  I refer you to the book "Path Notes of an American Ninja Master" by Glen Morris.  In it he states that the ration of enlightenment among meditators is the same as among non meditators, which is about one in a million.  However the ratio of enlightenment among meditators who are also warriors is a thousand times higher, one in a thousand.

 

Does the book say how such a number was calculated? Also, are you saying that you believe Glen Morris is enlightened and hence qualified to make such a statement?

 

On 11/4/2017 at 9:20 AM, Starjumper said:

 

I don't know how or where he got these numbers from, but going along with the concept, what is it that makes the difference when you add warrior to meditation?   Meditation + Warrior.  (he uses the term martial artist but I prefer warrior).

 

[Gunther]

On 04/11/2017 at 5:44 PM, Lost in Translation said:

 

What is the ratio among warriors who are not meditators?

 

Warriors place themselves in situations that can end their lives in a instant. Such situations demand living in the moment. Anything else is sure path to destruction. Perhaps it is the living-in-the-moment that leads to enlightenment?

Reminds me of the Tibetan bardo:

At the moment of death if you are calm, aware, without fear, you pass straight into the light (so to speak😀)

Trouble is if you die not enlightened, you could end up in a scary nightmare unable to wake up (cause you dead) until you find the next birth

Edited November 5, 2017 by Gunther

[allinone]

yea, you probably can become time traveler, in heaven time goes faster, and if want slow down you just go to hell.

[Starjumper]

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

Does the book say how such a number was calculated? Also, are you saying that you believe Glen Morris is enlightened and hence qualified to make such a statement?

 

It does not say how he came up with the number but the book describes his hellofa kundalini experience, which is similar to the enlightenment experience resulting from Taoist nei kung (real nei kung*), but more painful.  The Taoist one is mainly intense bliss along with other things ... emotional bliss.

 

* Real nei kung - not what a lot of people on this forum think it is.

Edited November 5, 2017 by Starjumper

[Starjumper]

 

On 11/4/2017 at 9:38 AM, 9th said:

A man can go still further than that; a man can learn to see. Upon learning to see he no longer needs to live like a warrior, nor be a sorcerer. Upon learning to see a man becomes everything by becoming nothing. He, so to speak, vanishes and yet he's there. I would say that this is the time when a man can be or can get anything he desires. But he desires nothing, and instead of playing with his fellow men like they were toys, he meets them in the midst of their folly. The only difference between them is that a man who sees controls his folly, while his fellow men can't. A man who sees has no longer an active interest in his fellow men. Seeing has already detached him from absolutely everything he knew before.

 

- Castaneda

 

I didn't want to quote the whole thing but I liked the whole thing.  I'm impressed by Castaneda's experience and insight.  Thank you for sharing those.

[Starjumper]

Enlightenment Experience

 

Here I will describe what the process of enlightenment is like a Taoist system of nei kung, the spiritual path of the warrior and the path of the wizard.  

 

It is characterized by a sudden change in your state of being and awareness. It happens so suddenly it's like flipping a light switch, and you are intensely aware of the sudden and profound shift. It is characterized primarily by a couple of things, one of which is emotional bliss and the other is called cessation, which means your thinking completely stops. When thinking stops then your sense of ego also stops because the ego, or intellectual sense of self, is generated purely by thinking.  A lot of people overuse the word bliss, and it’s used in advertising, so it has been cheapened, also when people think of bliss they will be thinking of physical bliss, which isn’t so hard to come by, with sex or drugs for example.    Emotional bliss is completely different from physical bliss and it is a very powerful feeling, not to be confused with some feelings of happiness.  It is something that most people will never experience, even fleetingly.  The emotional bliss makes you feel acceptance and unconditional love for others, it makes you feel like everyone and everything is wonderful, that everything is perfectly fine, and there are really no problems in the world. This condition lasts for several days, slowly tapering off after the first day.  For me the emotional bliss and cessation of thinking lasted in full strength for about a day.   The second day the emotional bliss was a little bit less and there was a little bit of thinking. The third day marked the ending of the emotional bliss which tapered off to feeling normal but content.  Thinking also returns to it’s normal condition.  

 

Edited - I discovered my computer can take dictation, but it needed a lot of fixing and I didn't find all the places to fix first time around.

 

Now when thinking returns then you start to think about what it is that just happen to you. You realize it's something very special because it never happened to you before and by the way it probably will never happen again either.   i think in most cases people who haven’t even read much about it will get the idea that they just had an enlightenment experience, however they may not be sure if they have read some of the bullshit concerning enlightenment which is put out by some well meaning but clueless amateurs.

 

One of the first things that happens when thinking returns is that you have some of your deep questions answered instantly. I think in Mahayana Buddhism it is called Rain Cloud Samadhi, where they say that all the knowledge in the universe pours down on you like a sudden cloudburst, but that's an exaggeration.  What happens is that no matter what the deep and seemingly impossible question that you may have, philosophical or about human nature, the answer comes to you right way and it feels like the best answer.  

 

I think it requires a lot of self honesty to have the experience in the first place, but once thinking returns then the self honesty reaches a level of savage ruthlessness.  You don’t kid yourself or make excuses any more, and a related byproduct of this is that you don’t let other people kid you nor accept any excuses from them either.  Your response to people, on seeing them lying to themselves and you, whether on purpose or not, can be ruthless as well.   After all, if people are deceiving themselves and lying to themselves they can’t help but lie to you as well, because that is their view of things, confused as it may be.  This is one thing that contributes to the emotionally dark post enlightenment time that is frequently reported.

 

A little later, as you start thinking more about things from your new point of view of ruthless honesty the negative and dark things in the world seem stronger, more in your face so to speak, more wrong. This is in great contrast to your previous experience of emotional bliss and feeling that everything is wonderful. Your new level of self honesty causes you to accept these things, however it becomes depressing and upsetting to see all this shit in the world and the terrible things that people do to each other.  When some people get to this point in the post enlightenment experience the literature reports that they sometimes go crazy or commit suicide because it's so depressing. 

 

This is where the bravery and patience of a warrior helps you. Even though you become depressed and saddened you realize this is the way of the world and of course you want to help make it better.  You want to improve things, and since you know that this practice you have which lead you to have this wonderful experience and love and honesty can be so beneficial to others you think that everyone should have the same experience and you want to help them have it. This is the state of enlightenment, which is actually post enlightenment (the word enlightened, ending in the letters ‘ed’, means past tense) which the Buddhists call bodhisattva. So then you want everybody to become your students and learned this wonderful chi kung which took you there. It takes some time to realize that most people are not interested in this process, they don't believe you could take them there anyway, and even if they did most of them really don't want to do the work or stick with it. This is brought home more strongly when you notice all the money grubbing unenlightened idiots whose advertising uses promises enlightenment generally combined with the concepts of ‘quick and easy’.  So after a few years you just kind of give up and realize you'll be lucky to help even one person, and you end up not really giving a damn about all of people who don't really give a damn about themselves either since the main things they care about are egotistical. This State is what the Buddhists call being a Buddha, actually giving up and letting go and letting them run their rat race to be first to the slaughter house.  Due to feelings of empathy and compassion you wish them well and wish you could do something to help but in the end  wishing them to have not too much pain on their blind journey.

Edited November 7, 2017 by Starjumper

[9th]

 

[Lost in Translation]

2 hours ago, Starjumper said:

It is characterized primarily by a couple of things, one of which is emotional bliss and the other is called cessation, which means your thinking completely stops. When thinking stops then your sense of ego also stops because the ego, or intellectual sense of self, is generated purely by thinking.

 

That's fascinating. Thanks for sharing!

 

I have experienced mini events over the years, nothing as shattering as you describe. A while back I was working with a shaman, mainly using visualizations and such. Quite watered down, suburban stuff IMO. That's fine. I'm not into the hard core anyway.

 

One journey I traveled to the upper worlds, kept going up and up. Kinda surreal. When I finally stopped I stood before a door. OK, opened it up and... A wave of pure golden light, moved in tendrils - not like any light I have ever seen. It fell upon me and I felt my mind just stop. Null. No thoughts. Instantly I fell to the ground, prostrated. Was filled with... shame. Not the best word but the closest to what I felt. The light could see through me. It knew me - intimately. It knew me better than I knew myself. Infinitely so. I could not hide. I could not make excuses. I could not think. There was no point in thinking. Any thought I could possibly have it would already know before I would. it just held me there for what felt like hours. In reality it was only a few minutes.

 

When the shaman brought me back out of the journey I was crying. I knew that I had seen God. It was overwhelming, but not. Does that make sense? Maybe this was just my imagination. I can't prove anything. But I experienced it just the same.

 

This world is filled with strange things.

[Starjumper]

3 hours ago, Lost in Translation said:

When the shaman brought me back out of the journey I was crying. I knew that I had seen God. It was overwhelming, but not. Does that make sense? Maybe this was just my imagination. I can't prove anything. But I experienced it just the same.

 

This world is filled with strange things.

 

Yes it is, filled with strange and amazing things.  I think it was a real experience, maybe not real in the real world, but real in the spirit realm.    Did the shaman hold you, touch you or give you some energy to initiate this experience you had?

 

Just curious, were you an atheist or agnostic when this happened

 

I had a slightly similar experience, it was during a retreat when the presenter showed a pocket sized picture of Sai Baba to us in the audience.  Even though I was sitting some distance away I saw the picture was glowing a little bit, and I felt love coming from it, something I had never felt before, and also something I though could only be felt by the sender and not the receiver.  I also knew I was looking at god, and the key word here is 'knew', just like you used.  It was strange because at that time I was a devout atheist.  The funny thing is I still don't believe in a god, but I try to reject beliefs in general anyway.  Now I will call myself an agnostic as far as 'the' one god to rule them all is concerned.  

[Lost in Translation]

16 minutes ago, Starjumper said:

Did the shaman hold you, touch you or give you some energy to initiate this experience you had?

 

There were several of us in the room. The shaman was drumming, and chanting. I don't recall him touching me. He is a powerful man, calm and nothing to look at, but with a strong presence about him. Funny thing, he stopped teaching our group shortly after that. He never said why.

 

19 minutes ago, Starjumper said:

Just curious, were you an atheist or agnostic when this happened

 

Raised atheist, turned agnostic. I've always wanted to believe - a regular Fox Mulder. But I've never been able to, not really. Part of me knows that if I can just 'flip that switch' I'll be able to believe, truly believe. Another part of me knows I won't do that.

[silent thunder]

Thank you for sharing your experience Lost!  That's a potent one.

 

[Fa Xin]

Very cool stuff. 

 

Thanks for sharing everyone.

[9th]

8 hours ago, Lost in Translation said:

This world is filled with strange things.

 

FTFY

[thursday]

On 7-11-2017 at 3:32 AM, Lost in Translation said:

Raised atheist, turned agnostic. I've always wanted to believe - a regular Fox Mulder. But I've never been able to, not really. Part of me knows that if I can just 'flip that switch' I'll be able to believe, truly believe. Another part of me knows I won't do that.

 

Reminds me of power being out this week several times and trying to flip a switch to no avail. Doubts about my path have been prevalent at this time despite previous experiences. "I want to believe, but.." & if only I could flip that switch and make the power go on!

 

Pains, doubts, frustrations, expectations, cultural influences that will all "go away" when the light is on.. Instead of seeing it like something we have to do in order to turn on the light again.. Can we feel the darkness and embrace it?

 

Maybe making the decision to embrace all that is better than turning on the switch = believing in ourselves and walking, choosing our path fully regardless of power being on or not..

 

[Marblehead]

Yep, our power to do things is limited.  Part of awareness is knowing what these limiters are.

 

[allinone]

On ‎06‎.‎11‎.‎2017 at 9:31 PM, Starjumper said:

Spoiler

 

Enlightenment Experience

 

Here I will describe what the process of enlightenment is like a Taoist system of nei kung, the spiritual path of the warrior and the path of the wizard.  

 

It is characterized by a sudden change in your state of being and awareness. It happens so suddenly it's like flipping a light switch, and you are intensely aware of the sudden and profound shift. It is characterized primarily by a couple of things, one of which is emotional bliss and the other is called cessation, which means your thinking completely stops. When thinking stops then your sense of ego also stops because the ego, or intellectual sense of self, is generated purely by thinking.  A lot of people overuse the word bliss, and it’s used in advertising, so it has been cheapened, also when people think of bliss they will be thinking of physical bliss, which isn’t so hard to come by, with sex or drugs for example.    Emotional bliss is completely different from physical bliss and it is a very powerful feeling, not to be confused with some feelings of happiness.  It is something that most people will never experience, even fleetingly.  The emotional bliss makes you feel acceptance and unconditional love for others, it makes you feel like everyone and everything is wonderful, that everything is perfectly fine, and there are really no problems in the world. This condition lasts for several days, slowly tapering off after the first day.  For me the emotional bliss and cessation of thinking lasted in full strength for about a day.   The second day the emotional bliss was a little bit less and there was a little bit of thinking. The third day marked the ending of the emotional bliss which tapered off to feeling normal but content.  Thinking also returns to it’s normal condition.  

 

Edited - I discovered my computer can take dictation, but it needed a lot of fixing and I didn't find all the places to fix first time around.

 

Now when thinking returns then you start to think about what it is that just happen to you. You realize it's something very special because it never happened to you before and by the way it probably will never happen again either.   i think in most cases people who haven’t even read much about it will get the idea that they just had an enlightenment experience, however they may not be sure if they have read some of the bullshit concerning enlightenment which is put out by some well meaning but clueless amateurs.

 

One of the first things that happens when thinking returns is that you have some of your deep questions answered instantly. I think in Mahayana Buddhism it is called Rain Cloud Samadhi, where they say that all the knowledge in the universe pours down on you like a sudden cloudburst, but that's an exaggeration.  What happens is that no matter what the deep and seemingly impossible question that you may have, philosophical or about human nature, the answer comes to you right way and it feels like the best answer.  

 

I think it requires a lot of self honesty to have the experience in the first place, but once thinking returns then the self honesty reaches a level of savage ruthlessness.  You don’t kid yourself or make excuses any more, and a related byproduct of this is that you don’t let other people kid you nor accept any excuses from them either.  Your response to people, on seeing them lying to themselves and you, whether on purpose or not, can be ruthless as well.   After all, if people are deceiving themselves and lying to themselves they can’t help but lie to you as well, because that is their view of things, confused as it may be.  This is one thing that contributes to the emotionally dark post enlightenment time that is frequently reported.

 

A little later, as you start thinking more about things from your new point of view of ruthless honesty the negative and dark things in the world seem stronger, more in your face so to speak, more wrong. This is in great contrast to your previous experience of emotional bliss and feeling that everything is wonderful. Your new level of self honesty causes you to accept these things, however it becomes depressing and upsetting to see all this shit in the world and the terrible things that people do to each other.  When some people get to this point in the post enlightenment experience the literature reports that they sometimes go crazy or commit suicide because it's so depressing. 

 

This is where the bravery and patience of a warrior helps you. Even though you become depressed and saddened you realize this is the way of the world and of course you want to help make it better.  You want to improve things, and since you know that this practice you have which lead you to have this wonderful experience and love and honesty can be so beneficial to others you think that everyone should have the same experience and you want to help them have it. This is the state of enlightenment, which is actually post enlightenment (the word enlightened, ending in the letters ‘ed’, means past tense) which the Buddhists call bodhisattva. So then you want everybody to become your students and learned this wonderful chi kung which took you there. It takes some time to realize that most people are not interested in this process, they don't believe you could take them there anyway, and even if they did most of them really don't want to do the work or stick with it. This is brought home more strongly when you notice all the money grubbing unenlightened idiots whose advertising uses promises enlightenment generally combined with the concepts of ‘quick and easy’.  So after a few years you just kind of give up and realize you'll be lucky to help even one person, and you end up not really giving a damn about all of people who don't really give a damn about themselves either since the main things they care about are egotistical. This State is what the Buddhists call being a Buddha, actually giving up and letting go and letting them run their rat race to be first to the slaughter house.  Due to feelings of empathy and compassion you wish them well and wish you could do something to help but in the end  wishing them to have not too much pain on their blind journey.

 

 

 

Do you notice circling?

Are you familiar with the website Dharmaoverground.org?

 

What circling is is going from one knowledge to another. If to practice everyday or doing a prolonged retreat and reaching to the point that feels like i have had this knowledge before, it seem like circling. And thus its possible to create a map.

Emphasis is on circling, it can be that it only seem it is circling, because that's just another knowledge itself that sensation of having had this before.

That knowledge is sensation meets sensation. Its like being aware of yourself, but in that case there is no self but the heart discovers its feelings goes round and round and it then stops clinging to that and the substance or essence will be revealed, you then can call it out and manipulate it and put into pulsation or circle movement then you black out, cessation happens or forgetance.

 

gaining experience into those things, going over and over again. Substates, master states, something new all together etc.

 

There is another way on top of it. It is human interactions, like if i call your description of "enlightenment experience" a trash.

[awaken]

開悟為回光，回雙眼之光

enlightment is "back light"- make your eye light go back to yourself

雙眼之光為陽，神火之灌注

your eye light is yang -- where you make your shen fire