Talking to ones self

It's like the huffing gasoline version of love!

 

Yea, just make sure that "letting go" doesn't become a mental concept.
And then make sure that "making sure letting go doesn't become a mental concept" doesn't become a mental concept.
Repeat x infinity
And onward, foreeeveeeeeerr!!!!!

It's kind of funny, in an ironic, God laughing in your face sort of way.

 

Exactly lol. Infinitely recursive letting go . . . ftw

 

thats the best translation of that I've seen yet, where did you get that from?

 

The spirit is unchanging

While the ego looks at past experiences of spirit, the spirit's still there kicking, in 100% fullness, looking at the ego reminiscing. The "experiences of enlightenment" that we talk about, are nothing more than the "ego's take on the experience of enlightenment". There's nothing wrong with this, it is how it is. What I've learned is that it really doesn't matter if you attempt to describe these experiences, if you're right, if you're wrong, if you meditate, if you don't. The spirit CAN'T be affected by anything that ego does, and as long as ego appears to exist, the apparent ego believes it is you. Through accepting this, I've found that "I" am more free to do whatever it is that is in my nature, which happens to include meditating, and trying to describe experiences of enlightenment. But really, that's not the important thing, because the only important thing doesn't actually care that it's important. Nothing is gotten, it is what it is.

 

the ego is not a bad thing.

thinking that it is will only plant negative seeds.

an unbalanced ego is what I think is bad. an ego is what breaks you off from the all realizing whole, imo.

 

The ego can't realize the whole. The whole's just there. Spiritual entertainment =/= spirit.

There's nothing wrong with ego, unless the ego decides so. It's just happening. It's always been happening, and it always will be happening. It's got to happen this way, because there is no other way for it to happen.

 

Absolutley. What the spirit is, I have no idea, it's everything and nothing at the same time/never happened. I've gotten to the point where I have accepted the realization that I can not express the inexpressible so long as I think it as anything beyond me, or within me, or any mix of the two, or both equally, or neither of them, etc.
I cant help, just as the rest of us cant help, to do anything BUT exist as an expression of it, yet at the same time, one get's easily tangled up in wondering why. And to me, yes, there is a meaning to all of this happening, there is a reason why to everything, but when I look up into the sky while the Sun rises or watch a ladybug land on me and chill for a moment, I can only see the question why as the answer to everything in itself.
Buddha nature, samadhi, enlightenment, and so forth, they are experiences that the ego has, because there is no other experience to be had. Creation itself (and all that manifested out of it) is Buddha nature, it is samadhi, and it is enlightenment.
If at 15 years old I was able to sit for just a brief moment, caught by the throat and forced to see reality through the painful process of shutting down the screen between me and you during my first magic mushroom peak (and first psychedelic experience), to suddenly and forcefully have the awareness of spirit in the raw realized, to watch as every speck of data perceived through all of my senses go from being mindbending in complexity to being simple to being spirit to being One to being nothing, I am left with the impression that enlightenment is in fact much like true light itself; the Sun comes up and the Sun goes down.
The ego experience, I believe, is the reality of spirit, because it is what it is, to borrow your expression introspectre. What would life be without death? What would waking consciousness be without sleep? Some may say that the ego experience is an illusion, but to them I say that the question is the answer. Or, more bluntly, it is what it is.

 

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html

 

“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”
- Alan Watts

 

I agree that the spirit can't exist without ego and vice versa. Nothing can exist without it's opposite, and only through seeing the unity of opposites does any REAL transcendence take place. Duality is fucking wonderful, easily the most mind blowing aspect of reality for me.

The Self, is the experience (ego, thoughts, mind, or "object") and the experiencer (soul, spirit, awareness, egoless state, or "subject"). What is it that lies in between these two "things"? Experiencing. Self is experiencing.

 

Spirit has no opposite, from a transcendent view or otherwise.

And I'm beginning to think that nothing else does either.
After all, is the opposite of white really black, or is the opposite of white simply "not white".

 

What spirit actually is has no opposite, I agree. I'm referring to the ego concept of spirit that has an opposite, which is the ego concept of ego.

In an ego less state, there is only experiencing. However, if you can only get to that state of "just experiencing" without ego, you're going to be missing out on that "full experiencing" 99% of your waking life. Through transcending the dual nature of concepts, you don't even need to shed ego.

 

There's a choice?
It's my understanding that it's a fundamental part of being human.

 

I don't really believe in choice, but yes it is an "apparent" choice if you will. Have you never meditated into an egoless state? Taken a psychadelic to achieve it? Determinism aside, is deciding to enter an egoless state not a "choice"?

 

I did that on shrooms. Like crazy. Every thought that I had I said out loud, but in an insane person's whisper. And then I realized what I was doing and when I tried to tell myself to stop saying everything out loud, I actually shouted really loud, "quit thinking your thoughts!" and then I whispered it over and over agian for about an hour.

 

No, I've never been in an egoless state, and if you or anyone else thinks that they have, it's my belief that you are simply fooling yourself.

For one, it's a question of identification. Have I stopped identifying with my ego from time to time? Yes, certainly. Have I ever been "ego-less"? No, at least not as I am now.

What egoless implies to me, is complete identification and total immersion in universal consciousness, (which I also feel to be a permanent and unchanging state) which I don't think is fully acheivable as a human, simply because of the nature of the plane of existence that humans live on. Can we stop identifying with the ego? Yes. Can we be ego-less? Id on't think so. So the question arises, if you really have been in an egoless state, then why aren't you now?

 

The mind discriminates form into myriad forms. There is no ego, and there is no non-ego. There is no oneness and there is no otherness, because these are created by mind. Minds, trees, mountains, atoms; all results of mind. Without mind there is no multitude.
The formless to which change takes no place, is not attainable to mind because of the discrimination between attainable and unattainable. If a spiritual seeker were to find out what the formless is, they would wish they had never started looking for truth in the first place.

 

The memory of having lost mind is rather paradoxical, isn't it?
As usual it comes down to discrimination between ego and egoless. But they are both results of mind!

 

You are right about the concepts of ego and egoless being creations of ego. We're having a discussion through our egos here though, I'd say it's fine to make distinctions as such.

What I'm saying is that you can achieve that universal identification while ego is active, through complete immersion in what you're doing. When you forget that you exist as a separate entity because you're so involved in washing dishes for example, it doesn't matter that you "have an ego", because you've forgotten that your ego is there, and in that moment it doesn't exist.

Maybe you're right, and the ego-less states I think I've been in are simply imaginations of mind. That's really not important to me though; the first time I entered whatever appeared to me as an ego-less state, there's this certain sense of supreme validity that I'm sure you're aware of. That validity is still here, right now. It's what I am. So in that sense, while my ego is still here talking to you, I don't need to say "yeah one time I was ego less and for a moment I knew what I was". I know what I am, right now. I can feel it, I always could feel it, I simply didn't know how to feel it.

Feel free to say "yeah but the past doesn't exist so therefore blah blah blah blah". I'm not talking about the past here. I'm talking about right now, supreme validity looking at my ego trying to convince itself that it's enlightened (because it doesn't actually believe it is) by typing on a message board. It's really not important to me what "I" do anymore, my life is none of my business. Be content to be the witness, all things become clear.