Is there such a thing as a "total awakening"?

[Blessed2]

It's a bit hard to explain what I'm asking. From what I've gathered, the path, or spirituality, is uncovering / embodying the true nature of me and reality, truth, or God. Absolute Truth.

 

This does actually convey duality, "uncover". As if whatever I'm experiencing now, an individual person on planet earth living in time and space is illusion, or not-truth, and spirituality / the path is uncovering truth.

 

But still. If no rock is left unturned, if literally every corner of me is shed light on, "enlightened", and the true nature, absolute truth and god is completely, totally uncovered and embodied, is it still possible to remain "in the body" as this individual person on planet earth... etc.?

 

One thing in my mind that is discordant is this idea that the world / body is ego, attachment. And when the ego / attachment is completely uncovered and enlightened, the world and body will be gone.

 

It seems that at least ACIM and certain yoga traditions tell this story. That total complete enlightenment isn't possible in the body / world, the body can't "hold it" (if the body isn't some special yogic body or whatever) and you will die and leave this planet and time. Also Sadhguru and Osho has mentioned that most people who awaken just leaves the body immediately. (Yogic arrogance..?)

 

This is one of those discordant thoughts than kind of hold me down from pursuing this path with joy and excitement. Who on earth would do that if they just might die suddenly?

 

I'd like it to be something else. I'd like it to be possible to be in total peace, totally "done" and "ready", to be complete, while in the body and world.

 

I don't want some crazy yogic achievements. I don't want "highest levels of god-realizations".

 

I just want to feel complete. I want true peace. While also "in" this body, is this world, having good time with friends and listening to music and all that fun stuff.

[Blessed2]

Interesting how I went from "total awakening" to "feeling complete and true peace". 🤔

[Lotus]

“If I could only figure out how to do all this without my body.”

– Alan Watts’ last words before he died in 1973

 

1 hour ago, Blessed2 said:

I don't want some crazy yogic achievements. I don't want "highest levels of god-realizations".

 

I just want to feel complete. I want true peace. While also "in" this body, is this world, having good time with friends and listening to music and all that fun stuff.

Same! Health & spreading the love - that's my life's "mission".

 

I could imagine going "yogi-level" when I get a bit older. But for now, as I'm still in my twenties, I wanna make the most joyful experience out of it (btw, not saying that going "full yogi" is not a joyful experience). For now.. meditation, love & living the dream life. Fuck yeah. 😎

 

1 hour ago, Blessed2 said:

Interesting how I went from "total awakening" to "feeling complete and true peace". 🤔

Feels so good. 

[Forza21]

In Vedanta,  they say " When God's wake up, all the world is gone with him" . And you are that.  Here:
https://www.swami-krishnananda.org/ans/ans_25.html?fbclid=IwAR2IKxkFx2YAYeydimwAlWhCZ4GVGyN5DJvm9PkU352KaLCs-dNTyOxiW5w

For God, the world is unreal.  It's like a dream.

For us, to experience it, we must become finite and limited,  so for us it's real.

I think it's impossible to even write in God's state. In order to talk, speak, communicate, you need to take the position of that "limited I". And then you play your little human role.

But you can also remember who you really are. 🙂

[Blessed2]

Insights coming up and bubbles being bursted.

 

First I came from "total awakening" to "feeling complete and true peace".

 

Now I came from "feeling complete and true peace" to "emotional guidance NOW!"

 

Tracing back to here and now.

 

"Feeling complete and having true peace" is projected onto time. Aversion! Thought-stories!

 

💕💕🥺

[Mandy]

The end is knowing that there is no end. There's already not a you stuck in a body but you get to seemingly create with it. You get to have your cake and eat it too. That's what I'd call "total".

 

I love how Abraham Hicks talks about physical life as the "leading edge". "You can't get it wrong and you never get it done." It really is the best of both worlds, that there isn't a you and isn't a world and yet, look at THIS! ❤️🤣

[Aware Wolf]

This  is a good question, a good thread. 

I think first we have to define what total awakening is. There's going to be different definitions here. Total adds another layer here. I'm suspicious of any claims of a one and done awakening. IMO there's always more to learn on the Path. There's more wisdom, kindness,  equanimity and happiness. 

 

I've half jokes that it's funny how yoga people have kundalini awakenings, Mahasi vipassana people may feel vibrations, Zen people get kensho, shamans receive visits from spirit animals, Christian mystics know God, Pentacostals speak in tongues, Ayahuascans meet Mother Ayahuasca. I  believe our Path and awakening is individualistic, bound largely but not entirely, by our concept of it. 
 

 

Some readings on awakening and enlightenment that I like a lot. 

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Two Visions of Awakening 

When we compare a linear ascending path with a spiral unfolding, we find two quite different conceptions of spiritual fulfillment. The linear path holds up an idealistic vision of the perfected human, a Buddha or a saint or sage. In this vision, all greed, anger, fear, judgment, delusion, personal ego, and desire are uprooted forever, completely eliminated. What is left is an absolutely unwavering, radiant, pure human being who never experiences any difficulties, an illuminated sage who follows only the Tao or God’s will and never his or her own. If this is the ideal we hold, we also have to acknowledge that such beings are exceedingly rare or may not exist at this time on this earth. The more circular vision of enlightenment presents freedom as a shift of identity. In this vision, too, we awaken to our true nature, and rest in a timeless freedom of spirit. We know that our true reality is beyond body and mind. And yet because we also live within this limited body and mind, the ordinary patterns of life may continue.

 

Jack Kornfield. After the Ecstasy, the Laundry 

____________________________________________________________________________________

 

Normal people are deluded 

by their Enlightenment. 

Buddha's are enlightened 

by their delusions. 

   -- Dogen 

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

 

In particular, we want our personal selves to be different than they are. For example, we want to make ourselves "enlightened." We picture being an enlightened self as somehow glorified, different, and separated from the rest of poor ordinary mortals. Enlightenment seems to us to be a great achievement, the ultimate ego attainment. That eagerness to become Enlightened pervades many spiritual centers as an undercurrent of excitement about spiritual practice. It's ridiculous, really. 

   --Joko Beck. The Natural Man. In Nothing Special: Living Zen. 

__________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Don't be an arahant, don't be a bodhisattva, don't be anything at all —

if you are anything at all you will suffer. 

– Ajahn Chah

_________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Leaving maps and expectations behind, in the end we must turn our hearts in the direction of love and awareness, come what may. In living from this awakened heart we all become bodhisattvas, all servants of the Divine. We replace any claims of levels of enlightenment with a vow to awaken each moment, together with all beings. This is the path of patience, compassion, wisdom, and generosity, the path of our willingness to live in the reality of the present. Only here can we find freedom and rest in a timeless perfection. As Suzuki Roshi put it: “Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity.” If there is a self who claims enlightenment, that is not it. Instead, he went on, “What we are speaking about is moment-to-moment enlightenment, one enlightenment after another.”

-- Jack Kornfield. After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

No-One Becomes Enlightened

   I used to believe that people actually became enlightened, and that the event was similar to winning the jackpot in a national lottery. Once the prize had been won, the beneficiary would thereafter be guaranteed bliss, infallibility and incorruptible goodness. 

   In my ignorance I thought these people had obtained and owned something that made them special and totally different from me. This illusory idea reinforced in me the belief that enlightenment was virtually unobtainable except for an extra-ordinary and chosen few. These misconceptions sprang from some image I held of how a state of perfection should look. I was not yet able to see that enlightenment has nothing to do with the idea of perfection. These beliefs were greatly strengthened when I compared my imagined inadequacies with the picture I held of whichever "spiritual hero" I happened to be attracted to at the time. 

   I feel that most people see enlightenment in a similar way. 

   Certainly there have been, and still are, many who seek to encourage such beliefs and who have actually claimed to be enlightened. 

   I now see that this is as pointless a declaration as someone proclaiming to the world that they can breathe. 

   Essentially the realisation of enlightenment brings with it the sudden comprehension that there is no-one and nothing to be enlightened. Enlightenment simply is. It cannot be owned, just as it cannot be achieved or won like some trophy. All and everything is oneness, and all that we do is get in its way by trying to find it. 

   Those who make claims of enlightenment or take certain stances, have simply not realised its paradoxical nature and presume ownership of a state they imagine they have achieved. They are likely to have had a deep personal experience of some kind, but this bears absolutely no relationship to illumination. As a consequence they still remain locked into their own individual concepts based on their own particular belief systems. 

   These people often need to take on the role of "spiritual teachers" or "enlightened masters" and inevitably attract those who need to be students or disciples. Their teaching, still rooted in dualism, inevitably promotes a schism between the "teacher" and those who follow the teaching. As the following increases so does the exclusive role of the master need to be enhanced. 

   One of the usual symptoms, when such a role has been adopted, is a clamp-down of any admission or sign of "human weakness". Together with this a distance is usually created between "master" and followers. 

   As the specialness of the "master" becomes more effective, and the demands of the followers become greater, so invariably do the teachings become more obscure and convoluted. As the obscurity of the teachings increases, so does the schism get wider and many of the followers become more confused and submissive. The usual effect on those involved can be unquestioning adulation, disillusionment, or an awakening and moving on. 

   However, these kinds of influences have established and maintained an illusory sense of doubt and inadequacy in the collective unconscious about people's ability to realise and allow something that is as natural, simple, and available as breathing. 

   -- Tony Parsons. The Open Secret. 
______________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Zen Story & Koan

A monk asked Yunmen, "What is Awakening?" 

 

Yunmen answered, "A dried shit stick." 

Edited April 3, 2022 by Aware Wolf

[Joseph Maynor]

Let's look at the word total together.  A total awakening means the end/the terminus.  If someone claims a total awakening and then adds addendums to that, that's evidence against the initial claim to a total awakening, pretty clearly.  From my experience and perspective -- awakening is gradual throughout your whole life, and there's masculine and feminine awakenings too scattered in there.  You're constantly awakening if you're pursuing development work your whole life long.  And then the other qualifier I want to raise is -- not everyone grows at the same rate or ultimate destination from the perspective of the collective for whatever reason (whether nature, nurture, fate, genetics, grace, systemic issues, etc.).   Muslims, love them or hate them, are consistent that Muhammad was the last prophet.  That's a total awakening in the sense of at least they're honest about it and live it/practice it.  A total awakening is a terminus, an end point.  So, if you come in later and say, well, "I had another total awakening," probably (in my mind), you were wrong both then and now.

Edited April 4, 2022 by Joseph Maynor

[Phil]

On 4/3/2022 at 4:28 AM, Blessed2 said:

It's a bit hard to explain what I'm asking. From what I've gathered, the path, or spirituality, is uncovering / embodying the true nature of me and reality, truth, or God. Absolute Truth.

 

This does actually convey duality, "uncover". As if whatever I'm experiencing now, an individual person on planet earth living in time and space is illusion, or not-truth, and spirituality / the path is uncovering truth.

Is desert & mirage a duality? 

On 4/3/2022 at 4:28 AM, Blessed2 said:

 

But still. If no rock is left unturned, if literally every corner of me is shed light on, "enlightened", and the true nature, absolute truth and god is completely, totally uncovered and embodied, is it still possible to remain "in the body" as this individual person on planet earth... etc.?

 

One thing in my mind that is discordant is this idea that the world / body is ego, attachment. And when the ego / attachment is completely uncovered and enlightened, the world and body will be gone.

 

It seems that at least ACIM and certain yoga traditions tell this story. That total complete enlightenment isn't possible in the body / world, the body can't "hold it" (if the body isn't some special yogic body or whatever) and you will die and leave this planet and time. Also Sadhguru and Osho has mentioned that most people who awaken just leaves the body immediately. (Yogic arrogance..?)

Can a mirage embody a desert?

On 4/3/2022 at 4:28 AM, Blessed2 said:

 

This is one of those discordant thoughts than kind of hold me down from pursuing this path with joy and excitement. Who on earth would do that if they just might die suddenly?

Can a desert be held down by a mirage? Can a mirage die, or is a mirage… a mirage? 

On 4/3/2022 at 4:28 AM, Blessed2 said:

I'd like it to be something else. I'd like it to be possible to be in total peace, totally "done" and "ready", to be complete, while in the body and world.I don't want some crazy yogic achievements. I don't want "highest levels of god-realizations".

Before an I can want an it to be something else… what is (the desert), is an I an it and a something else (mirage). 

On 4/3/2022 at 4:28 AM, Blessed2 said:

I just want to feel complete. I want true peace.

The problem, what prevents that, is a mirage (belief). The further away from the mirage (aversion) the realer it seems, the more discord is felt. The closer to the mirage (inspecting discordant beliefs) the more you are the desert, eternal peace, being the mirage. Miraculous. 

On 4/3/2022 at 4:28 AM, Blessed2 said:

While also "in" this body, is this world, having good time with friends and listening to music and all that fun stuff.

Mira:

Sanskrit; ocean, sea. 

Proto-Slavic; peace. 

Latin; wonderful, wonder. 

Greek; goodness, kindness. 

(The desert)

 

Cle:

A place, the means. 

(The mirage)

 

There’s no duality, you are the miracle. 🤍

[Zeroguy]

Yes Mir means Peace in serbian.Female name is Mira.

[Mandy]

Mira means sight or "to look" in Spanish. 

[Zeroguy]

There is enlightenment experience where you become actual formless Infinite Love.

No nondual talk and theory will get you there.Only practises.

[Aware Wolf]

5 hours ago, Zeroguy said:

There is enlightenment experience where you become actual formless Infinite Love.

No nondual talk and theory will get you there.Only practises.

 

That's a point of view that emphasizes practice. It works for many. Then there's the pov that because the root problem is ignorance (seeing the rope for a snake) that we need to remove this ignorance. Advaita emphasizes we need a teacher. Once someone explains "Oh that's a rope near the well, there is no snake" the problem goes away. Without a teacher, you can meditate on the snake, pray for removal on the snake, and do bhakti and karma yoga to remove the snake. Will that work? 

Also believing that only practice will get you there is a belief and theory.  Which practices? Are there any practices that don't work? To what degree? For everyone? All the time? What practices work best? For multiple practices, is there a sequence or map? -- all this would be theory. 

Still, all this talk of mine would probably get me hit with a stick by an old time zen master...

Edited April 4, 2022 by Aware Wolf

[Reena]

On 4/3/2022 at 2:00 PM, Blessed2 said:

Interesting how I went from "total awakening" to "feeling complete and true peace". 🤔

To be honest I don't believe in awakening. I believe in constant growth. A human being is constantly growing in awareness. Awakening looks more like an ego satisfaction tool to me. 

 

[Adeptus Psychonautica]

6 hours ago, Cupcake said:

To be honest I don't believe in awakening. I believe in constant growth. A human being is constantly growing in awareness. Awakening looks more like an ego satisfaction tool to me. 

 

I agree.

 

Our lives are a never ending journey with ever moving goalposts. If anyone thinks there is some happy end point where you just put your feet up and say "Yay I'm done!" then I would say you haven't been paying attention to your life so far.

 

The phrase "awakening" has become meaningless bollocks, deployed by wannabe guru's in an enlightenment arms race to validate how far along their imaginary path they are - its almost surreal comedy at the point. "Oh... you awakened to god consciousness? Wait until you awaken to God Awareness Consciousness Hyper Non-Awareness - that's the real awakening!"  

[Forza21]

3 minutes ago, Adeptus Psychonautica said:

I agree.

 

Our lives are a never ending journey with ever moving goalposts. If anyone thinks there is some happy end point where you just put your feet up and say "Yay I'm done!" then I would say you haven't been paying attention to your life so far.

 

The phrase "awakening" has become meaningless bollocks, deployed by wannabe guru's in an enlightenment arms race to validate how far along their imaginary path they are - its almost surreal comedy at the point. "Oh... you awakened to god consciousness? Wait until you awaken to God Awareness Consciousness Hyper Non-Awareness - that's the real awakening!"  

I really like and admire your work. After all this trips, you seem so grounded, and genuine nice person to interact with, not some super-hiper-ultra-enligtented-god-realization-mode-guy 😉 Thank you for that!

With all this experience,  do you think psychedelics give you viable knowledge of reality? Is it always the case, or is it easy to get deluded?
 

[Phil]

“The hook brings you back.” 

- John Popper

 

[Adeptus Psychonautica]

@Forza21 Thanks mate, I appreciate that. My take on this life is that we are here to be human beings, and so I intend to make the most of that human experience - even the messy bits 🙂

 

11 minutes ago, Forza21 said:

With all this experience,  do you think psychedelics give you viable knowledge of reality? Is it always the case, or is it easy to get deluded?

I absolutely DO NOT think that psychedelics give you viable knowledge about reality, and I think those that are looking for that kind of knowledge in there are somewhat missing the point of what these amazing experiences offer. I think psychedelics offer insight (not knowledge), and so one should always look for personal meaning within these experiences rather than literal truth. The moment you think you have found literal objective truth within a psychedelic experience is pretty much the point at which you have become delusional.

 

What these experiences offer us is PURE MEANING, and the opportunity to be in communion to the transcendent - In my opinion that is more than enough (understatement of the century!), and with that in mind claims around superpowers, hierarchies of awakenings, and esoteric knowledge feel kinda silly.   

[Reena]

38 minutes ago, Adeptus Psychonautica said:

The phrase "awakening" has become meaningless bollocks, deployed by wannabe guru's in an enlightenment arms race to validate how far along their imaginary path they are - its almost surreal comedy at the point. "Oh... you awakened to god consciousness? Wait until you awaken to God Awareness Consciousness Hyper Non-Awareness - that's the real awakening!"  

Totally agree. It's their giant ego at task. This has unfortunately become a major trend across the internet and in the real world and its making people crazy. Everyone wants to reach enlightenment. It's pure brainwashing consuming people 

 

 

[Forza21]

9 minutes ago, Adeptus Psychonautica said:

@Forza21 Thanks mate, I appreciate that. My take on this life is that we are here to be human beings, and so I intend to make the most of that human experience - even the messy bits 🙂

 

I absolutely DO NOT think that psychedelics give you viable knowledge about reality, and I think those that are looking for that kind of knowledge in there are somewhat missing the point of what these amazing experiences offer. I think psychedelics offer insight (not knowledge), and so one should always look for personal meaning within these experiences rather than literal truth. The moment you think you have found literal objective truth within a psychedelic experience is pretty much the point at which you have become delusional.

 

What these experiences offer us is PURE MEANING, and the opportunity to be in communion to the transcendent - In my opinion that is more than enough (understatement of the century!), and with that in mind claims around superpowers, hierarchies of awakenings, and esoteric knowledge feel kinda silly.   

Wow, thank you. This is a very healthy approach to this topic.

I have very little experience compared to you,  but from what i've noticed, this experiences might be so easy twisted by ego-mind, our shadows, knowledge, previous experiences, projections etc, that saying "its objective truth"  sounds silly to me.  Thank you 🙂 

Edited April 5, 2022 by Forza21