Today I spent about 2 hours with someone that messaged me on Skype looking for help.
I haven't done this in awhile but - damn - I learned a lot!
Something VERY interesting that I saw today was this: Enlightenment has more than one front.
I don't want to say levels because there is only one level of understanding one needs to reach, and then there are multiple fronts which must be see using this one level of understanding.
It begins with a foundation of awareness. And then awareness needs to shine in certain places.
The first place, being the ego.
We know how terrible the ego is, and how it destroys human kind and the earth. But simply making it through the ego isn't enough because suffering continues from the other fronts.
By transcending the ego we only eliminate one source of psychological suffering.
To me, psychological suffering occurs when there is a disconnect from felt oneness with being.
I've discovered that there is one other front to meet. It is resistance to the now. When you want to be at some place in the future that is other than now. I remember Eckhart Tolle talking about this.
This is why zen occurs...
When the mind is constantly seeking to answer a faulty question like "Who am I?", it seeks to use experiences and all kinds of memories to build this answer up. And when the answer doesn't match what the person would like the answer to be, they experience a dissonance, suffering. Otherwise they are experience "Swag" or "High Self Esteem" because the answer to that question is aligned with what the person would esteem. It matches an image they would approve of.
When they transcend that, the mind stops trying to answer that question. You realize there's no answer for it. So you experience a release of tension from needing to either find the answer or live with the dissonance. The thinking stops for awhile and there's no background thinking.
Now, say the persone has transcended the ego. They no longer have incessant questions or mental seeking to fulfill that question. Instead there is something they desire in the future or something they fear. What happens then?
The person's mind - their RAS (reticular activation system) is on overdrive trying to get to that future.
When the person is totally content where they are, when there is no future to look forward to, nothing to attain, nothing to strive for, nothing to fear, their mind is at peace because there is no question to answer.
This is the function of the mind - to answer questions. This is also the source, in my opinion of human suffering. Causing the mind to answer a question or find a solution to something that impossible to answer or do.
I haven't done this in awhile but - damn - I learned a lot!
Something VERY interesting that I saw today was this: Enlightenment has more than one front.
I don't want to say levels because there is only one level of understanding one needs to reach, and then there are multiple fronts which must be see using this one level of understanding.
It begins with a foundation of awareness. And then awareness needs to shine in certain places.
The first place, being the ego.
We know how terrible the ego is, and how it destroys human kind and the earth. But simply making it through the ego isn't enough because suffering continues from the other fronts.
By transcending the ego we only eliminate one source of psychological suffering.
To me, psychological suffering occurs when there is a disconnect from felt oneness with being.
I've discovered that there is one other front to meet. It is resistance to the now. When you want to be at some place in the future that is other than now. I remember Eckhart Tolle talking about this.
This is why zen occurs...
When the mind is constantly seeking to answer a faulty question like "Who am I?", it seeks to use experiences and all kinds of memories to build this answer up. And when the answer doesn't match what the person would like the answer to be, they experience a dissonance, suffering. Otherwise they are experience "Swag" or "High Self Esteem" because the answer to that question is aligned with what the person would esteem. It matches an image they would approve of.
When they transcend that, the mind stops trying to answer that question. You realize there's no answer for it. So you experience a release of tension from needing to either find the answer or live with the dissonance. The thinking stops for awhile and there's no background thinking.
Now, say the persone has transcended the ego. They no longer have incessant questions or mental seeking to fulfill that question. Instead there is something they desire in the future or something they fear. What happens then?
The person's mind - their RAS (reticular activation system) is on overdrive trying to get to that future.
When the person is totally content where they are, when there is no future to look forward to, nothing to attain, nothing to strive for, nothing to fear, their mind is at peace because there is no question to answer.
This is the function of the mind - to answer questions. This is also the source, in my opinion of human suffering. Causing the mind to answer a question or find a solution to something that impossible to answer or do.
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