Awareness. Awake-ness. The obviousness. The presence. The NOW that's always constant. The Mystery. The Nameless. The infininance. The thing that can't be grasped or accurately explained with limited human conceptions. The ALIVE-ness. The 'all that is'. ... THIS!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ5s22gGAZk
Everyone knows they're aware at some point, if you ask someone if they're aware they usually go there for a split second to give you an answer. Some people completely realize they're aware (some call it enlightenment), and some just have glimpses....but most stay in the dark for most of their life. Once you realize your here on earth and deduce what you actually are using what some would call 'self inquiry', the most baffling and intriguing question occurs next, and that is... what is my awareness aware-ing to?
[SIZE=medium]Blessings,[/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]It all seems to come down to the present esseff. I agree with you on the ego as well. I use to be one of those ego killing maniacs until i became friends with it and learned what it is all about. It is easy to blame it, just like how politicians demonize an enemy to galvanize the masses, so we seem to demonize the ego to make ourselves more spiritual somehow. [/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]As to what freethinker is getting at, i agree, we have all had those moments of pure awareness. The problem is, how the heck do we extend that moment so that we can abide within it for the rest of our time here? [/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]When i was twenty i accidentally but on purpose awoke the true Kundalini: the fourth rising not the first two that most consider Kundalini Awakening. The experience was painful, excruciatingly painful, then numbing, as every part of my body was dead, and then, blinding. After hours of this, i came down. It was the following day that i got to experience life perpetually in that moment. It lasted about six hours, then i went to sleep, and when i woke up, i was back to my habituated fluctuating mental state - in other words - my normal distracted self. [/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]Remembering/recollecting seems to be an important facet of inviting that state of being into our lives. This is one of the stories we hear about the Buddha, as when he remembers an experience he had when younger and seeks to replicate it in his meditations. [/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]Be Blessed[/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]Suba[/SIZE]
Day Four Last night's meditation focused on the Buddhist's concept of the Twelve Links of Interdependent Origination/Causation. In this particular poem craving was the main focus: what is it, when does it stop, and what is its relationship to Enlightenment? I expound on the poem in my Sacred Yoga Forum. _______________________________ Craving is like grasping for the next potato chip even before we've finished the current one. Being full is when we've stopped reaching - stopped consuming. That's what we do 2 B Full-filled as well…
Makes sense. The experience would not transform you entirely, especially not those lower aspects, as these are part of the journey that must be worked out linearly in time. The higher energies are finer, and in opening to them, such an experience would give you a sense of liberation which can last for some time. But life is a human life, and as such, living it as we do, back you must come to experience working your way through it with all the usual issues the ego mind produces. It will surely happen again though.
Enlightenment is in the present, because only the present moment exists and it is eternal. We are ALL Buddhas of our own. We may reach the present in our unique ways, sports, music, dance, sex, song, meditation, etc, But it all leads to the one truth which is the present.
I feel like I get mixed messages about what meditation is How can you meditate on something?. is meditate a synonym for think about? I was under the impression that meditation is the act of liberating yourself from thoughts and distractions. More like sleeping than thinking. To empty and clense your souls basically. -yuri
That, my friend yuri, is a complicated subject. And to be honest, a question not easily answered. On one side, you are correct, meditation is about stilling the mind by using an anchor, a focal point. This can be anything, and depending on which sense you relate with the most, will often determine which focal point is best suited for you. For instance, I am a feeler, so focusing on bodily sensations is the easiest way for me to anchor the mind and still the craziness. Other people find visualization, focusing on a sound or mantra, being with an odor, counting the breath, labeling the mental stuff, and so forth as best helpful in stabilizing and focusing the mind. Having said that, there are many different meditative traditions. Contemplative meditation being one of those. In general this is focusing on a topic, idea, or something complex and seeking to attain insight. This is also a type of meditation I work with. The basic principle is this: we stabilize the mind, let the external and internal sensations dissolve into the back ground, while focusing on our chosen topic. Deepening our focus, we continue to bring our mind to this topic, thinking about it from as many different angles as possible. Then, a point is reached when we have contact with the subject matter. At that point, insights arise. For me, these insights come as pithy sayings and poems. If we push on, continue to sharpen our focus, let go of the insights, then we experience Samadhi - one of the aims of meditation. The next is to deepen the experience and stabilize it. Last step is to bring that into our daily lives. There are also traditions of meditation that seek powers, skills, qualities, and such. The idea of which is to meditate on a particular thing, say patience, until it becomes part of us. Granted, my little rant here does not exhaust the topic of meditation by any means. I just hope this has answered your question, or at the very least, given you some information that can lead you to an answer. Be Blessed Suba
Day Five Even though I have no clue what Enlightenment is, there is just something about me that keeps me from it Last night was all about confronting some of the things that keep me from fully opening and dedicating myself to Awakening – whatever that means. I expound on this pithy poem in my Sacred Yoga Blog ___________________________ You say, "I don't deserve it." It's not a deserving issue - there's just some things the "i" cannot see. To deserve something is to become it.
The idea that you have to become anything. What might that be I wonder? An idea, an expectation, a feeling that you lack something? That there is more for you to be, more than you currently are? In a way, if you feel that, you are invalidating things as they are right now. That this moment, and who you are within it, is in some way not right, not good enough, not essential for the journey you are on, and where you are along that path. The journey is all. The journey is the destination.
When you see through all of the nebulous mystification surrounding the word ''Enlightenment'', all that needs to be said is that it's a state of ego-suspension and can easily be attained (temporarily at least) through performing activities which absorb one's concentration sufficiently enough.. there's nothing ''special'' about it.
You don't think it's presumptuous to say that you know exactly what the highest peak of spiritual enlightenment is, and you can easily attain it, as if it is an absolute fact?
What is ''Enlightenment'' then, if it isn't a state of ego-suspension? EDIT; And if you can't tell me, then how can you tell whether what I'm saying is ''presumptuous'' or not?
I'm not saying I have a definition of enlightenment. nor am I attempting to refute the notion of it being ego-suspension. First of all, a thing is more than the word representing the thing. Whether or not ego-suspension is enlightenment, the issue is in presentation more than your notion of enlightenment. And I found the way you presented it as though you absolutely know perfectly enlightenment and can attest as fact that there is no such thing as any special spiritual attainment a bit presumptuous. No offense intended. Just saying there could be more to it than your own thoughts and experiences. We should always be open to there being more to reality than we think, or else we are closed off.
It's kind of more ''presumptuous'' to talk about a ''thing'' (''Enlightenment'') in such a way as to not actually be talking about anything, and then to ''presume'' that what you're talking about, which is nothing, is something. What I was aiming to do was to ascribe a coherent definition to the word, but if I seemed to assert it as ''fact'', then okay.