Chakra Superstar wrote:gib wrote:Woaw, a sequal!!! I seem to have returned to ILP at just the right time. How's everybody enjoying COVID?!
Ha!! I take it the ‘sequal’ is a code joke? If so, it was going to be MySQL.
Not really a code joke, but
that's a good code joke.
Chakra Superstar wrote:Don’t get me started on the COVID-1984. It’s ironic that the mask is the symbol of this authoritarian take-over and repression… and it’s only just started...
Where are you? California?
Chakra Superstar wrote:What's interesting is that there's a burst of spiritual awareness that I haven't seen since the 60's. It's far more sophisticated than it was 50 years ago and when the economic pyramid collapses, the millions of people who have been holding it up, will be forced to find a better way. It won't be fun but we've shown we won't change unless we're forced to change. So be it.
I'm sure. With millions of people with nothing better to do than to stay home and smoke pot, it's not surprising you get a spiritual awakening.
Chakra Superstar wrote:The intellect is fine so long as we’re undoing misconceptions and not building new ones.
The Hindus have a saying about using a thorn to remove a thorn -- i.e. use the intellect to remove the blocks created by the intellect -- then throw both thorns away.
In the early stages, we often need metaphors and word salads but, in the end, a serious explorer will go beyond the intellectual mind trap and explore Consciousness through Consciousness, directly. This is what thousands of masters over thousands of years have all been pointing to.
"The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me;
my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love." - Meister Eckhart
"What you’re looking for is what is looking." ― St. Francis of Assisi
We're like the guy wearing glasses who turns the house upside down searching for his glasses all the time not noticing he's looking through them.
The "I" or eye, or looking, or glasses, all refer to Consciousness. Consciousness is so close, so subtle, so intimate, we constantly overlook it because we're looking for a 'thing' and we're looking for that thing outside ourselves. This is the sort of intellectual stuff we need to know.
This resonates well with me. I call this "objectification". The mind can't help but to objectify the concepts of its contemplation. It turns it into an object--sometimes abstract, sometimes immaterial--but an object nonetheless. This is important in order to center its focus. It becomes the
objective, the target towards which it aims.
It doesn't mean we literally believe abstract things are really objects--we still say "yeah, I know it's just an abstraction"--but keeping this in mind doesn't always prevent us from falling into some of the traps of objectification. I believe Plato's concept of the forms is a result of taking objectification too seriously. I believe the idea of the soul--the idea that it can leave the body and float to heaven after death, like smoke or a misty vapor--is the result of objectification gone awry.
The mistake most philosophers and scientists make when they objectify consciousness is to imagine it is a phenomenon like all other natural phenomenon; more precisely, that it can be treated like a third-person entity. But consciousness
only exists as a first-person entity--as "me". <-- From that perspective, the only way to come to an understand of consciousness is like you said: to stop intellectualizing it and just experience it. Consciousness is essentially everything around you--your experiences and perceptions which, if you quiet your mind and focus on them in the moment, are indistinguishable from the world. Taken to its logical conclusion, consciousness just
is the world (solipsism?).
But then this is where you can get really tangled up in intellectual knots--if you think about it too deeply, the logic of this leads to all sorts of absurd and paradoxical conclusions--which is why they say the intellect is not suited to understand consciousness in its essential form. Having said this, I've tried. I wrote a 3 volume book attempting to sort out all these knots, and I think successfully. However, it remains intellectual--an intellectual contraption as Biggy would say--and doesn't really count as enlightenment (you need drugs for that

).
Chakra Superstar wrote:The dream metaphor is a great metaphor for a number of reasons but the best reason is because it posits that Enlightenment is just the process of waking up – becoming more conscious. Remove the dream/illusion and what remains is Reality.
Do you think there are aspects of the world as we experience it that we
are awake to? And the process of becoming more conscious will wipe away some aspect but preserve others? For example, here in Calgary, I get a nice view of the mountains out West. Would a Buddhist tell me the mountains are fake? Or would I still believe the mountains exist even if I were enlightened?
In that sense, it isn't
quite like a dream. In the dream,
everything you experience is illusory--the entire world you are immersed in is a hallucination--but as a metaphor, the dream analogy is still a good one.
Chakra Superstar wrote:gib wrote:I think this nicely wraps up why Buddhism strikes me as such a tease--because while it beacons me to believe there is such a state as enlightenment, the very concept entails that I've just dreamt it up.
Nice insight, Gib.
In Absolute terms, that’s correct – it’s all bullshit. EVERYTHING!!!! There
is no Enlightenment. There’s absolutely nothing to attain and no 'self' to attain it but this is all correct from the timeless Absolute perspective. Before time, there is no reincarnation, no karma, no birth and death samsara cycle etc.
In the relative sphere -- this universe -- time and space exist as do various processes of Awakening. They are real, but they're not Reality.
I think I can only conceptualize the relative sphere. The absolute sphere, as you put it, is beyond my comprehension. So as a being of the relative sphere, I'd have to say enlightenment is real--but still in a skeptical light.
The concept of real but not Reality also resonates with me somewhat. I came up with a metaphor once about a man who lived all his life in the jungle. For all he knows, the entire world is one big jungle. Everywhere he travels, it's just more jungle--jungle stretching out forever. He knows nothings about deserts, snow and ice, oceans, planes and savannas, etc. So Reality isn't what he thinks it is. But nevertheless, the reality he does know--the jungle--is real. This kinda ties into my question about whether some aspects are real but others not. Could it be that some things which I currently take to be real remain real when I become enlightened--like the mountains, like the sofa I'm sitting on, like this computer--just like the jungle remains real even after the jungle dweller becomes enlightened to the much vaster range of different environments the real world consists of?
Chakra Superstar wrote:I enjoy your insights and questions, gib, but my available time has become too fragmented to post consistently so I'll stick to the hit-and-run posts.
Hope all's well in your world.
My world is getting better like the stock market gets better--lots of ups and downs that I can't control, but generally, over the long run, on an upward trend.
Hit-and-runs are fine with me. I'm not frequenting ILP as often as I used to, so hit-and-runs might be the
only way for us to have a conversation.