MetaSage

Remove distractions. Practice being alone and still. Be boring and mundane without avoiding it. It's highly doubtful that you're able to be aware of your every thought. How many seconds out of the 36,000 a day are you aware of your breathing? Likely very few. Practice being present.

Dogen Heidegger Immanuel Kant

@Phil Calling them thought and emotion doesn't say much. They can occur due to you holding the possibility of a past. They exist in relationship to the past. As emotions, they are rooted in thought. They are conceptual by nature. In the experience of shame, there seems to be a certain unwillingness that I don't yet quite get. There might be some pain in there, too, likely as a result of our common disposition of aversion towards experiencing them. Shame as an experience shows up radically different from, say, happiness or boredom, even though they are based on concept, on an emotionally-charged thought. How come they show up differently? What do the differences consist of? What allows or creates both? Looking into one's experience of them is key. Even if what you say is true, how can we know? If each of us don't grasp what they are in our own experience, it inevitably becomes a matter of believing.

Noted! A few added to a playlist.

But what are they? How do they come about? This doesn't seem to answer what these are and how and why they occur. What are their components? How do you create them out of nothing? What is the experience called guilt? What is the one called shame? These must be contemplated by each of us individually.

Discussions like these seem to be the epitome of religion. "We are right and our beliefs are better than yours", "our place is the right place", etc. Hilarious to see all this drama unfolding on both ends. Being mesmerized smelling their/our own farts.

Who cares? These are online forums. You might as well pick the Xbox over the PS5.

You seem to hold ideals about enlightenment. It is becoming conscious of the absolute aspect of something, usually existence and oneself. It doesn't have to do with how one acts, necessarily. There has been enlightened individuals who did what would be considered nasty by social standards: Japanese warriors who killed people Alan Watts was an alcoholic, as well as Chogyam Trungpa. Nissargadatta smoked cigarettes like crazy Didn't Jesus also whipped people and turned tables around in the market? Hearsay has it that he even murdered someone as a kid, and had anger management problems Nazis who were into eastern spirituality I'd say that enlightenment doesn't neccesarily change or limit one's behavior. Images of enlightened masters being peaceful, not being angry, etc. ever or never acting stupid is misleading. They're people, still. A persona seems to be "behind" in order to show up in the world. So what can be done now can also be done after enlightenment, including the nasty stuff. I'd imagine that you'd be more likely to act in accordance with intelligent action but this is a relative matter, one of self-transformation, not enlightenment.

Yeah, Ramana understood and didn't seem to care about telling others explicitly. Why would he? Likely it was implied in his teachings. He would say "who is the I who knows reality?" "There's no separation." etc. Probably ego is still present in many teachers, you're right. Not denying this possibility here. However, appearing arrogant doesn't necessarily detract from being conscious. I guess it's easy to think if one appears arrogant in one's eyes, she isn't "enlightened". In any case I was simply rambling and sharing nonsense. Don't take it too seriously. 😄

he has a point. if someone is authentically and profoundly conscious, there comes a point where playing coy out of social concerns turns into a pretension and lie. There's no point for a master at math to pretend like he isn't a master at it, even though in our society we see that as "showing off" or arrogance. It could simply be an accurate statement of their skill and understanding -- maybe with some ego or pride added. Say Ramana or Buddha. Let's postulate they were deeply "enlightened". You can see a certain certainty or authenticity that for some in our culture could be seen as arrogance. Like, "who do these guys think that they are? Saying they know what reality is, they must surely be full of BS." Well, it might be possible for someone to be conscious of what reality is. How can you tell? I guess ultimately we're bound to their word. A lot of these individuals seem to be honest people, but they could also be wrong. Who knows? This could also be abused by the ego to justify stupid or selfish behavior. Of course a "normie" would read that quote and say: who the f** is this narcissistic guy? What's he even saying? Rambling off.

that actually makes sense. Could be possible. Not necessarily the misogyny but perhaps even a certain deep, unconscious jealousy or envy towards the female sex. After all, males are born from females. Males are "outsiders", in a way, we were born from the opposite sex while females were born from their "kind", so to speak. I'd imagine that might have an impact on the experience of being male.

Right? The same seems to happen to me in a certain sense, Jesus Christ. Mostly talking about the irritation after some period of cement retention.

trolling and, incidentally, ended up testing bias. I was being humorous/ironic to the extreme in order to trivialize a bit this type of threads. I agree with @Joseph Maynor . If you want, get off the internet and phone often. It's healthy for you and as a result may also be for everyone else around you.

Leo is a fascist mother****er! lol

when your experience is allowed to be what it is, the possibility for being calm arises. Even if you're going through pain or suffering. Allowing seems to transform your experience. You may transcend and become free of stuff like emotions.

hm, good question. And yes, a lot of people I encounter and interact with give off that vibe of having lost something while growing up, perhaps it's just covered by tons of nonsense. 😄 Aside from these suggestions you're invited to look into it for yourself: Deconstruct your assumptions. In other words, contemplate what do you think is true? Really grasp that you really don't know anything. Notice how "knowledge" can actually create ignorance -- by making us conflate it with an experience of whatever's true. I've found that light doses of mushrooms open me up and teach me to take myself more lightly. These tips should enhance one's presence and wonder.

You sound like you're going through some emotional struggle as everyone else occasionally does. Hang in there. What is worth? Create it! Create a powerful purpose that is worthwhile to you. Get in touch with how one experienced life as a child, as a complete mystery to be contemplated and questioned. Learn to do things for their own sake, whatever they are! Throw yourself into whatever you do. I've found this to be pretty effective in changing your experience of things. Heck, even washing the dishes can be a joyful act, it's like you're meditating. My happiest moments have basically been about being completely present, allowing for things to be what they are. Learn to cultivate a "monk" love for experience. Thich Nah Han can help us in this way. How come a monk, with no distractions and barely any possessions, seems pretty happy to us doing mundane stuff? Something to contemplate.

Bottom lines go deeper than superficially adopted beliefs. This is the domain of transformation -- how your self shows up and acts in the world. My point is that bottom-lines are usually not cognized, whereas those beliefs you mention seem to belong to a superficial domain, ergo more easily recognizable. Even if you're conscious of who and what you are, I'd imagine that what you call yourself is still there fairly intact. How it shows up remains relatively the same. So it seems that enlightenment and transformation are different things. Besides, I hear tell that a few enlightenment experiences don't change the fundamental structure of self as it is although it usually helps in reducing clutter. 😉 I don't mean that those kind of beliefs are true, but that nevertheless they're held and generally uncognized. They're fundamental assumptions about the way we hold ourselves. And in one's experience, it doesn't seem like "believing" in stuff effectively dissolves them. Hope I'm making myself clear. In any case, your original point is taken, thank you.

Sounds good but take a look. A bottom line doesn't have to sound logical, but why do we feel undeserved? One possible reason is that we assume we're somehow wrong for not-knowing fundamental stuff about ourselves, life and existence. Especially when in virtually any culture not-knowing is seen as a malady, pretension will be adopted, both subtle and gross. With time, we start to feel uneasy and begin to suspect that we're inauthentic, fake, phony, superficial. It's due to the persona being performed by us, which doesn't exist, as if. This may be a key sense of identifying with an internal self, it seems to me.

we hold a bottom line belief about ourselves about being fundamentally unworthy of life. Perhaps.

A concept that is comfortable for the mind to entertain. Keeps it abstract, not grounded.

I don't get your point. What do you mean? Specify. And elaborate perhaps.

"dick power!" haha

adding the option to bookmark individual posts.

The argument can be made that human civilization may be devolving and becoming more decadent. No matter how many possessions and distractions we get, still our internal individual mediocrity and dullness prevails, and our superficial attempts at appeasing those feelings are futile. We're becoming increasingly worldly and yet we seem to have become less happy and more anxious, among other things. Analogously, we seem to live as a plastic flower rather than as a live one. Superficiality, pretension, lack of focus. We've placed knowledge above wisdom. And here we are.