If Awareness is Simple/Straightforward/Present-Always, What makes it Special?

[Orb]

Been inquiring into this as im kinda disappointed in Awareness lol. 

 

Awareness is a formless sense/feeling of pure wakefulness, it has no location, its IN, OF, and IS everything. 

 

This awareness is so basic, I lately realized the fact that no spiritual experience is relevant or even matters as the pure awareness always remains the same, awareness can never be "MORE" or "LESS" and this has kind of disappointed me. 

 

Although this awareness is so obvious and basic, I dont understand why Buddha/Jesus/etc. would risk their lives for this, its so basic and is always present anyways. 

 

I dont understand what else Buddha/Jesus/etc. discovered about this Awareness that made it special, or worthy of the title "Enlightenment". 

 

Recognition of the pure/non-local/eternal wakefulness hasnt changed anything in my life and I want my money back.

 

Like sure I can tell cool spiritual stories with my friends, but other than that I got nothing. 

 

 

[Alexander]

@Orb Glad you realized Truth.I will add that is pure mental masturbation and waste of time.

[Mandy]

If you are locationless and altitude-less and you want to climb to the top, you first have to come down to earth. What did Buddha, Jesus risk? Did they not just share and express the infinite love of thier shared being and other people who were believing in other people made too much of it? What money do you want back exactly? I bought a Monopoly game and there was like, way more money in there than what I paid for it. Highly suggest.  I certainly didn't buy it for enjoyment or fun with others. 

[Orb]

@Alexander Yea pretty much, I am more curious about why for YEARS people have made such a big deal out of this spiritual stuff when it is so basic than enlightenment itself.

 

@Mandy

 

They risked their lives telling people the spiritual stuff.

 

14 minutes ago, Mandy said:

What did Buddha, Jesus risk? Did they not just share and express the infinite love of thier shared being and other people who were believing in other people made too much of it?

 

Im all for Jesus and Buddha sharing infinite love, but why did they basically advertise that there is a better way of living and that it involves transcendence or awareness?

 

Like why did Buddha teach Vipassana if Awareness doesnt better the quality of ones life anyways, it doesnt hurt anyone either, its featureless. 

 

Im "in touch" with the formless awareness, and im disappointed because nothing has changed at all, anything I try to do is only the movie playing on the screen, so experiences are out of the picture now, theyre meaningless. 

 

I will admit I like how bland and tasteless it is, its growing on me. Maybe takes some getting used to, when I heard of all the lofty stories about God/Consciousness I thought id be running on the streets naked drowning in bliss. 

 

For me God/Consciousness is like Oatmeal with no sugar or fruit, Im perplexed as to why people use words like "bliss" in regard to this stuff. 

 

14 minutes ago, Mandy said:

What money do you want back exactly?

I was joking lol. Enjoy your monopoly money 🙂

Edited July 26, 2022 by Orb

[Dima]

@Orb until there is no direct realization that you are Buddha and Jesus there is more to let go. It's not conceptual, have to really notice thinking and see that you are bigger than that, everything so to speak.

[Orb]

@Dima

 

17 minutes ago, Dima said:

@Orb until there is no direct realization that you are Buddha and Jesus there is more to let go.

 

May you elaborate on this? Maybe it's a typo.

[Mandy]

5 hours ago, Orb said:

 

@Mandy

 

They risked their lives telling people the spiritual stuff.

 

 

Im all for Jesus and Buddha sharing infinite love, but why did they basically advertise that there is a better way of living and that it involves transcendence or awareness?

Did Jesus and Buddha buy billboards that sold people on a better way of life? Or do you think they were they like, goddamn , life is NOW, nothing can be lost, and so repressing the love that you are is the only real "death" that can be inflicted on a person, self inflicted. 

 

5 hours ago, Orb said:

I will admit I like how bland and tasteless it is, its growing on me. Maybe takes some getting used to, when I heard of all the lofty stories about God/Consciousness I thought id be running on the streets naked drowning in bliss. 

Bland and tasteless is a quality you be assigning. Try again. Pure potentially. 

Maybe bliss is no problem. 

5 hours ago, Orb said:

I was joking lol. Enjoy your monopoly money 🙂

You weren't joking. What sweat and tears and tears and effort have you put into this for gain? What are you expecting? 

[Orb]

54 minutes ago, Mandy said:

Did Jesus and Buddha buy billboards that sold people on a better way of life? Or do you think they were they like, goddamn , life is NOW, nothing can be lost, and so repressing the love that you are is the only real "death" that can be inflicted on a person, self inflicted. 

@Mandy that's my interpretation of it, im just curious as to what these guys were driving towards with their teachings if awareness is always present no matter what. 

 

56 minutes ago, Mandy said:

Bland and tasteless is a quality you be assigning. Try again. Pure potentially. 

Maybe bliss is no problem. 

It's a matter of expectations, I think of bliss more as pleasurable feelings rather than the lack of suffering as I think you point to.

 

57 minutes ago, Mandy said:

You weren't joking. What sweat and tears and tears and effort have you put into this for gain? What are you expecting? 

 

I'm expecting the separate self thought patterns to dissipate, leaving this magnificent flesh robot to its own devices, unhindered by self referential thinking, that's all.

 

I want to not be there anymore, I want to bask in this awareness more and more and learn to enjoy it's taste. 

 

I'm gonna listen to it from now on. Deepen my appreciation for its subtleties.

[Mandy]

8 hours ago, Orb said:

@Mandy that's my interpretation of it, im just curious as to what these guys were driving towards with their teachings if awareness is always present no matter what. 

When you identify with being a body mind, you "lose" (not really) but forget your identity as awareness. So aligning with Awareness or Who You Really Are can be like a return home. If you've been gone a long time the return home is a huge spectacular party like in the Prodigal Son parable.  If you didn't leave for very long, to go get groceries, returning home is just an everyday thing. But it's still home. Does it make sense now why people talk about parties and also "simply this"? If you're demanding a party, you're still the prodigal son squandering his inheritance and living it up. It's only when he loses it all that he returns home. 

8 hours ago, Orb said:

It's a matter of expectations, I think of bliss more as pleasurable feelings rather than the lack of suffering as I think you point to.

It's the same though, you're just projecting a flat feeling onto lack of suffering, which is how we normally think and speak. Lack of suffering is also passion and bliss and enthusiasm. But demanding them is suffering. 

8 hours ago, Orb said:

I'm gonna listen to it from now on. Deepen my appreciation for its subtleties.

👍

[Phil]

16 hours ago, Orb said:

Been inquiring into this as im kinda disappointed in Awareness lol. 

 

Awareness is a formless sense/feeling of pure wakefulness, it has no location, its IN, OF, and IS everything. 

 

This awareness is so basic, I lately realized the fact that no spiritual experience is relevant or even matters as the pure awareness always remains the same, awareness can never be "MORE" or "LESS" and this has kind of disappointed me. 

Disappointment is an emotion, a phenomenon, apparent experience. It’s substance is awareness but it isn’t the essential nature or essence of awareness. The emotion arises in conjunction with the thought of a self which is separate of and disappointed in awareness. Similar to how if the thought ice cream was believed to be ice cream there would be disappointment.  But in not believing the thought ice cream is ice cream, or in tasting the ice cream and knowing the difference, there wouldn’t be disappointment. The same would hold true if the thought were ‘I’m disappointed in myself’. If the thought were I’m disappointed in awareness, and what’s really meant is more ‘the world’, or the behaviors & actions of others in the world, what would be missing is the self recognition & therein self understanding of the infinitude of awareness. 

16 hours ago, Orb said:

Although this awareness is so obvious and basic, I dont understand why Buddha/Jesus/etc. would risk their lives for this, its so basic and is always present anyways. 

Infinitude. Awareness sacrifices the knowing of it’s own true nature in being creation. You might say to live without the willingness to die for anything isn’t wakefulness & isn’t really living at all. Also, paradoxically, the answer is for awareness to be creation and know it’s infinitude & true nature. 

16 hours ago, Orb said:

 

I dont understand what else Buddha/Jesus/etc. discovered about this Awareness that made it special, or worthy of the title "Enlightenment". 

The Truth of ‘the taste’ & substance of the ice cream, not thoughts about it. 

16 hours ago, Orb said:

 

Recognition of the pure/non-local/eternal wakefulness hasnt changed anything in my life and I want my money back.

 

Like sure I can tell cool spiritual stories with my friends, but other than that I got nothing. 

This is a thought or assumption of nothing, vs ‘the taste’ or, the Truth.

 

[Orb]

1 hour ago, Mandy said:

But it's still home. Does it make sense now why people talk about parties and also "simply this"?

@Mandy Not 100%, may you elaborate? 🙂

 

@Phil

 

28 minutes ago, Phil said:

Disappointment is an emotion, a phenomenon, apparent experience. It’s substance is awareness but it isn’t the essential nature or essence of awareness. The emotion arises in conjunction with the thought of a self which is separate of and disappointed in awareness. Similar to how if the thought ice cream was believed to be ice cream there would be disappointment.  But in not believing the thought ice cream is ice cream, or in tasting the ice cream and knowing the difference, there wouldn’t be disappointment. The same would hold true if the thought were ‘I’m disappointed in myself’. If the thought were I’m disappointed in awareness, and what’s really meant is more ‘the world’, or the behaviors & actions of others in the world, what would be missing is the self recognition & therein self understanding of the infinitude of awareness. 

 

When I say im disappointed I mean that I meditate and I dont really feel any different, it makes me feel more content sure, but it seems like such a long stretch to go from a practice that makes me content all the way to not believing thoughts about a separate self. 

 

Im kinda bitter that you enlightened guys/girls spoiled it for the rest of us, you all got to enjoy meditation for its own sake, and then you spoiled it for the rest of us by creating a "goal" called Enlightenment/Nirvana/Moksha and we are expected to meditate for its own sake, kinda like dont think of a pink elephant, dont think about enlightenment. I feel like im missing out on the fun. 😭 

 

Yea I know no one is enlightened, well whatever Jesus had that gave him the courage to die on a cross for this, ill have what he had please.

 

35 minutes ago, Phil said:

Infinitude. Awareness sacrifices the knowing of it’s own true nature in being creation. You might say to live without the willingness to die for anything isn’t wakefulness & isn’t really living at all. Also, paradoxically, the answer is for awareness to be creation and know it’s infinitude & true nature. 

 

My brain is going in circles with this one lol.

 

36 minutes ago, Phil said:

The Truth of ‘the taste’ & substance of the ice cream, not thoughts about it. 

This is a thought or assumption of nothing, vs ‘the taste’ or, the Truth.

 

This is what confuses me, how can the person in the movie screen "taste" the pure white light coming from the projector?

[Phil]

19 minutes ago, Orb said:

When I say im disappointed I mean that I meditate and I dont really feel any different, it makes me feel more content sure, but it seems like such a long stretch to go from a practice that makes me content all the way to not believing thoughts about a separate self. 

The beliefs are more subtle than yet recognized. The ‘me’ of ‘it makes me feel more content’ & ‘makes me content’ are the thoughts believed about a separate self. The backside of the dreamboard is great for writing these thoughts on, seeing the thoughts visually, and inspecting & questioning the thoughts. Also, the emotional scale is helpful in recognizing the distinction between ‘make me content’ & an experience of contentment. 

19 minutes ago, Orb said:

 

Im kinda bitter that you enlightened guys/girls spoiled it for the rest of us, you all got to enjoy meditation for its own sake, and then you spoiled it for the rest of us by creating a "goal" called Enlightenment/Nirvana/Moksha and we are expected to meditate for its own sake, kinda like dont think of a pink elephant, dont think about enlightenment. I feel like im missing out on the fun. 😭 

These would be less subtle beliefs in separate selves becoming or which became enlightened. Meditation is just allowing the activity of thought to settle. The beliefs of separate selves, and of being a separate self, is being projected onto meditation, such that expectations are held that meditation is a means of a separate self ‘getting’ something, enlightenment. Enlightenment has been framed to be something obtained so I feel better. The greatest feeling possible is that which is aware of and obscured by the activity of thoughts about a separate self getting enlightened to feel better. 

19 minutes ago, Orb said:

Yea I know no one is enlightened, well whatever Jesus had that gave him the courage to die on a cross for this, ill have what he had please.

 

 

My brain is going in circles with this one lol.

Yes, it’s because these are conflicting thoughts. (I know - no one is enlightened… & … Jesus had that). The courage is then credited to that he had something you don’t. And that ‘you’ of ‘you don’t’ is the ‘separate self’ of subtle thoughts / beliefs. How could you really know there is any shortage of courage within, without experience which reveals there is no shortage of courage within? One answer is by mistaking a discordant thought about what will happen or how things will go in a future… for the actual experience. 

The thought ‘my brain’ implies another duality and a separate self which has a brain. Meditation isn’t figuring out or resolving thought activity with more thought activity. There’s something to be said for trying & exhausting that though, and maybe it’s beginning to be seen that it doesn’t per se, work. 

19 minutes ago, Orb said:

This is what confuses me, how can the person in the movie screen "taste" the pure white light coming from the projector?

If you’re sitting on your couch watching a movie and are very engrossed in it, it might actually seem like there are people in the movie. But if you turned the TV off it would be clear that there were not people in the movie. There was light which was the activity of the screen. 

[Phil]

What seems missed is the recognition & understanding of our infinite being forgetting itself by being experience. The ignorance is inherent, and also innocent. The hurtful & harmful things people do to each other carries discord in feeling with it, and this is commonly suppressed, or, an ignore-ance of how this feels. 

 

This comes to mind…

The Four Noble Truths as outlined in 624 B.C. by The Buddha:
The truth of suffering.
The truth of the cause of suffering.
The truth of the end of suffering.
The truth of the path that frees us from suffering.

 

The Truth of suffering in large part, or maybe completely, lies in identity. This or that happened to me. There is typically much processing, expressing, ‘working through’ the suffering & discord / doing ‘the work’, dispelling beliefs, all culminating in freeing oneself of the having innocently, but falsely, identified as the brain, body, finite mind, separate self, etc, and more & more understanding & compassion arises for the innocence, ignorance & continued ignore-ance of why the ‘to me’ is discordant in the first place, and how disregarding the suffering perpetuates the suffering. Both, so to speak, within oneself & within the world collectively. 

[Orb]

@Phil but I've got so much stuff going on, how can I add all the inspection required to the list? 

 

I wanna make money and be financially independent and I'm learning how to adult, I don't wanna put extra focus on spiritual work. 

[Phil]

@Orb

As far as I can see it isn’t additional or more time spent, it’s the same time spent just on inspection, questioning thoughts & beliefs. 

This is not prohibitive but is actually very conducive to the goals you mentioned. 

[Orb]

@Phil I've inspected beliefs before but they don't fully go away as I assumed they would.

 

For example there was a time when I got the Byron Katie app and logged a bunch of beliefs down on it, yet I still fell for those beliefs a few times after, they didn't immediately get purified.

[Phil]

4 hours ago, Orb said:

@Phil I've inspected beliefs before but they don't fully go away as I assumed they would.

 

For example there was a time when I got the Byron Katie app and logged a bunch of beliefs down on it, yet I still fell for those beliefs a few times after, they didn't immediately get purified.

Ok, what’s the next step? 

[Orb]

@Phil to just keep noticing the beliefs as they arise. 

[Phil]

@Orb

No, keep doing the work. 

[Orb]

@Phil ah okay.