Barriers to Enlightenment

I don't agree. Does learning about stealing make you not want to steal? Accumulating knowledge only causes change superficially. I can lay down thousands of perfectly realized and rationalized rules about what I should be doing, but it's still only a blueprint to conform ourselves to, and won't change the body or the mind. The universities and the belief that cultivating knowledge will cause change is part of what is preventing us from changing.

 

The more mindful you are the more solutions appear. You have got it backwards.

Thank you for your assistance. Your pathway however has led you only to dissent. No solution that I can see.

 

The only meaningful change is fundamental. It depends on how you apply knowledge doesn't it? Knowing the workings of an automobile for example, can give you a certain knowledgeable dexterity as well as marketable skill in helping automobiles to function. So at least technical education is a good fit for our economic system.

However, such education doesn't teach anything about the nature of our own being. If ones own being were recognized, much of what passes for useful knowledge would be seen as superfluous. What use for time has a pig, so to speak. What use for economic competition, when you can quantumly intone bread

 

Would learning that stealing money from your mother would result in her being upset and you being punished make you want to steal or not steal? Does learning about stealing make you want to steal/not want to steal? Depends on what side of stealing you learn about. Some steal because they have been stolen from, others do not steal because they have been stolen from. If you learn that thieves are rich and live great lives, you will probably steal. If you learn that thieves are scum and live a life that you would not like, you are less likely to steal.

Your statements (to me, at least) are completely untrue. We are products of our accumulated knowledge. Unless you consider all you have done (including learning to talk and to love etc) superficial then you are totally a result of the information you have received and stored throughout your life. If you lay out a blueprint to exercise physically and mentally and follow it and your mind and body do not change then you must be some sort of reanimated corpse. What has dictated humankind's mental evolution and social progress? Knowledge! How are we even discussing this subject and why are we all discussing it? Because we have received or conceived knowledge about this subject and we have learned that it pleases us to discuss it!

 

Please, people and their semantics. You can't see a solution without seeing the problem, you've got it backwards and upside down with parts missing. Seeing problems is not a bad thing, it is fundamental to the very essence of survival and to spirituality. What is a journey of spirituality if not a journey to solve problems? To put it simpler, our life is the solution, the spiritual journey is the =, enlightenment is the equation (the problem), the question we already have an answer to. We have the solutions already, like the OP says: the guru says "you're already enlightened" and people are like "who, me?"... This is because they do not understand the equation and where they fit.

A very common view in spiritual constructs can be expressed in the saying "There is no good, there is no bad, there just is." So problems are not bad, they just are. I think people block their chances of enlightenment when they see it as some sort of blissful nirvana. To attain such enlightenment, one would have to be ignorant. To attain any other form of enlightenment, you must identify many many problems with you and your world before you can overcome them to become a person of light.

To liken it to something like maths or science, very basic maths or science that is. Somebody would produce hydrogen through electrolisis, they have hydrogen where they once had water and electricity... HUH??? This raises many questions, so they would begin to create mathematical equations (problems) and solve those equations until they are enlightened on how their electrodes and water can produce the hydrogen. Do you smell what I'm saying?

 

Ahh, solution needs no problems. Solution is equal dispersal. It is not the problem that teaches but the solution. Facing the world with the equanimity that is warranted, (mindfulness), dissolves the dilemma of special interest where some parts we are careful with and some parts we are careless with. That disparity in investments keeps pace with the disparities in life. If you give an equal appreciation to each moment then you will be equal to any event.

I agree with you that physical existence consists of a series of sensations some of which we call pleasant and some maybe not so and this is true regardless of ones attainments in placing oneself in a state of abstraction.
By definition, to be totally transcendent one would not appear at all, being "beyond perception".

So you say a barrier to enlightenment is a lack of curiosity?

 

Most of that makes sense only if hit your head very hard several times and bears little or no relation to reality, or at least the reality that I perceive. I see the kind of abstract method you employ in such expression as a barrier to enlightenment. Get real, as the saying goes, I feel people mistake their escapism and imagination as "enlightenment" 99% of the time.

A lack of curiousity, perhaps that is one way of putting it, if you consider enlightenment as an answer to all your questions. I was implying more that the willingness to undertake a problem to find a more understandable representation of the solution would lead to enlightenment. When you have just your solution, you learn nothing but you possess the thing that you desire. When you set out to explain your solution, to change it from a random result of possible scenarios into a formula that can be definitely expressed and is true for everyone who would try to demonstrate it, that is more like enlightenment.

Let me try another analogy, a thoroughly British one:
Every day, Simon is brought a cup of tea at 5pm by his wife. They are a very traditional couple, Simon goes to work and earns a wage, then comes home to the house that his wife maintains and she makes him a cup of tea, bang on 5pm every day. They are so traditional, in fact, that Simon has never even set foot in his own kitchen, unless to wash his hands or empty his ash tray, Simon knows only to work and sit waiting for his tea. One day, his wife dies. Poor Simon. He goes to work regardless, comes home and waits in the sitting room, reading a newspaper, waiting for his cup of tea. After a while, it dawns on him that his tea will not arrive with no wife to carry it to him, so he goes to the kitchen to fetch it. On entering the unfamiliar room, he sees that there is no cup of tea waiting for him on the side, which is where he thought maybe the tea came from... Slightly bemused, he looks around until he finds a tea cup in the cupboard. He takes it to the sitting room but it remains just a cup, no piping hot tea materialises in it. He takes it back to the kitchen and fills the cup with water, takes it back into the sitting room but, you guessed it, the water doesn't become tea just like that. He takes it back into the kitchen and sees a black pot-like object on the stove. After investigating this for a while, he decrees that it must be used to heat fluids in. He proceeds to heat his water. When it is boiled, he pours it in his cup and returns to the sitting room... Still not tea!!!

I could go on but surely you see where this is going? The solution was his tea, provided by his wife as our lives provide our solutions. Without his wife, though, no solution is presented and he must undertake equation after equation until he can reach his solution and his fulfilment. And what is he now on the subject of tea making? Enlightened! Had Simon applied the notion that his solution needed no problem and therefore failed to address the coolness of the water, the absence of tea bag etc, he would have been sipping water for the rest of his days after work. He needed to embrace the reality of making tea in order to drink a cup.

 

The terms "most of this", is too vague a metric to determine what you may be objecting to. What is not understandable? In my definition to be enlightened is to be in possession of creative consciousness, to possess an inner vision. In this way all are enlightened but we forget the meaning or the extent of that creative consciousness and we fashion for ourselves, boundaries, barriers, without really comprehending that we see what we put there.
The whole is without condition and is therefore beyond what can be taught, but we can remove the barriers we have erected against the perception of it.

You are speaking of curious nature and learning. When I speak of enlightenment I am not speaking of a relative level of knowledge, I am speaking of a state of being.

Is it that it is long winded that makes it a British example? From your example I see we are not on the same page as to the definition of enlightenment. That we are able to teach ourselves in the way you describe is closer to my understanding. It is not the knowledgeable result that I refer to as enlightened, there are no idle thoughts.

 

Mumboest jumbo to the nth degree. I feel like a barrier to your enlightenment, so I'm going to step out here.

 

Thank you for your assessment.

 

Thinking one knows something for me is a barrier to enlightenment.

It has been said to practice with a beginner's mind.

I don't know anything really. I do know, though, that I was not willing to scroll through the last 15 pages of this thread.

Laziness is a barrier to enlightenment...



Beating oneself for being lazy is also a barrier.

Acceptance along with action geared towards positive change is not a barrier.

 

To be perfectly honest, this thread is a barrier to enlightenment.

 

If you believe that, then you must not realize that the light is within.

 

Unless THOU is not present because you can hide for the needs of THOU art explained for many sources of Light.:sunny:

His presence: I really don't know.

 

Thou art that. The I am I call myself is the same I am you call yourself.

Which explains "if".

As we reflect, we become reflective.

 

Explain, please.

 

Our mind is a kingdom we alone can rule and any barrier is self imposed.

 

OK, fine. Thanks.

 

Hi all.
For Neosimian....I joined this forum because i feel compelled to share some experiences i've been having lately.
I would hope it be ok to share a brief history of my "search".

In my early 20's i was given a book called "we're all doing time". And on about page 20 or so, i was stopped in my tracks and kept rereading the same couple of pages.....something resonated within me and i've never thought the same about life since that day.

So i guess that was the spark for my search (off and on...though more off than on....i guess because of the distractions being forced upon us here in the western world)for something other that what i'd been forced to sit in church and listen to as a kid.

I read lots of books(probably like most people who visit sites like this) and i've found them quite helpful. I joined a Buddhism group about 12 years ago for a couple of years but my change of job forced me to quit the group as i worked away from home all week.

In the Buddhist group we talked and meditated and talked more and meditated more but not much really "happened" for me.
After subsequent years of reading and meditating (more off than on..especially with the meditation) i was meditating in my truck (i'm a long distance truck driver and live in my truck during the week) i had an "experience" (which can obviously not be described to the mind) which left me,for a few moments with a feeling of TOTAL completion....there was nothing that i knew of that could have made me feel more complete and satisfied than the the place i was at that time. No amount of money or possessions or life situation or ANYTHING. Somehow it was felt that NOTHING could have made "me" (for want of a better word) feel any more complete than those few minutes..or however long it was.

I think that may have been the result of total surrender....surrender of myself...my ego...my thoughts.

I'm sorry if this seems like i'm going on and on about myself but i feel it maybe relevant to the question you posted.

Anyway,a few years later and not much searching and nothing "happening" until about six weeks ago. I'd been watching lots of video's on YouTube of various philosophers,past and present. I stumbled upon some Eckart Tolle videos (I'd read "The power of now" and "Practising the power of now" and "Stillness speaks" about 10 or 11 years ago).

I think they must have had some kind of affect on me because,one morning while driving home in my truck,i felt i'd touched that presence. I know it must have been for about 20 minutes because of the distance i was away from home and it lasted till i got home. Just that brief moment had had such a positive affect on the rest of my weekend.

Then a few days later it "happened" a few times but only for very brief moment..maybe a minute at a times.

These were like revelations to me in the sense that when i had had that experience years previously while meditating in my truck, i always thought that that experience in my truck was not a state of consciousness that i could live with in my day-to-day living in the world..i wouldn't be able to conduct "normal" life,where we have to do all the things that make up our daily lives. It just wouldn't be possible because that state was like an ecstatic drug trip or something. However i think it would be some kind of way to some kind of nirvana.
What these recent "experience" felt like,i could certainly live with!!

So,as i said earlier there was that 20 minute and those brief minutes experiences whilst driving my truck...THEN...5 days ago i was, again, driving my truck and for about four and half hours i was in "that state of presence"....the state of "no thought"..well,very few thoughts anyway...with soooooo much space in between the thoughts. Whenever a thought "came by" i didn't feel like i needed to grab hold of it....i just let it go on it's merry way while "i", the real "i" was "being"..... in the moment. There was no need to grab hold of thoughts and make some kind of story out of it the way we are all so conditioned to do!!!
And it's this habitual story-making which is a barrier to enlightenment. This story-making which we constantly do,from the moment we wake till we go to sleep is the barrier!!
The thought-streams we all have in our minds throughout the day is NOT the true reality!
It's just a representation of the day-to-day experiences and emotions we have but we spend the most of our waking lives in them.
I'm certainly not professing to be a "realized" being by any stretch. All i'm doing is telling my experiences. I'm not in the place of "non thought" at this moment...it's "business as usual" for the ego at this moment but those experiences have opened up a new can of worms so to speak. And that feeling of "non thought" is a feeling of completion and perfection that you can feel in your day-to-day life....i know all the mystics say we are already enlightened but, there are so may filters and layers in the way and in MY experiences a way to "cut" through the filters is to stay (as much as possible) out of your chattering,story-telling ego-mind.

I'm not saying that thought is the enemy!!!! We obviously NEED thought to learn and to live the lives we all live but, we don't need to be constantly in thought which is,unfortunately is where the most of us are...most of the time!!!!!

Sorry i didn't read all of the posts so i don't fully know of your experiences but
Vansrouge is basically saying the same as i just said....he's right!

Please Please reply.
Love and peace. Phil