Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post questions or suggestions here.
User avatar
Kunga
Posts: 2333
Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:04 am
Contact:

Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Kunga »

Many people ask, "How do you know if you're enlightened?" This is the big question everyone wants to know. How do you know if you're enlightened, and then once you're enlightened how do you stay enlightened?

Well the formula is actually pretty simple. Always staying in the present; always staying in the here and now… that's the first step.

The second step is to just forgive yourself when you fall asleep! For the rest of your life there's going to be states of enlightenment. You're going to feel “laaa!” I'm enlightened. You'll feel that your really staying in the present moment very well, at certain times and then at other times your going to fall back to sleep. This is going to happen for the rest of your life. Back and forth; falling asleep, waking up; falling asleep, waking up. This is all right.

What you'll find is that as you become more proficient and learn more to stay… (to develop more of a habit, not learn!) create the habit of staying in the present moment, then you'll have those enlightened states for longer periods. It will feel as if you "stay enlightened" for say… three days instead of three minutes when you first start out. When you first start this you'll have moments, you'll have glimpses. If you're watching this [YouTube Video] right now, you've probably had glimpses of what enlightenment feels like, what it is. And then you've also had the experience of falling back to sleep and forgetting that state.

Now enlightenment is not a 24/7 bliss, 24/7 always vibrating at a high rate and passing out darshan to everywhere you go. That's not what enlightenment is. We've covered this in some other talks, but enlightenment is (just to be brief) knowing who you are. Enlightenment means "to know." So enlightenment means knowing who you are… not have a perfected personality. I did cover this in other talks. Not having a perfect personality, not having manifested a great bounty… you can be homeless and be enlightened. You can have a terrible personality and still be enlightened, knowing who you are, which is eternal awareness; the consciousness of God incarnate in its own imagination. We've said this before in other talks, and so now the question is how to stay enlightened.

Well, you'll know that you’re not enlightened when you’re in these moments of the human condition, the emotional angst, the emotional fluctuations, the ebbing and flowing of the mind coming back and forth, forgetting that you’re eternal self having a momentary experience of being human. If you can remember that all the time, you won't go back and forth between falling asleep and waking up. But you can rest assured there's a guarantee that you will fall back to sleep. Happens all the time.

Even great masters who seem very enlightened, who never seem to waiver… even they go through falling asleep and waking up… falling asleep again and waking up. The difference is that they can hide it better because they don't act out the human moments when they have fallen back to sleep! They've learned to have the feelings and have the passing weather (I call it weather) when the human condition rears its ugly head and you feel certain emotions again or have certain thoughts, or feel like the petty small human again, having issues and opinions or thoughts about this or that. What happens with the great masters however is that they remember more quickly again who they are. So this weather could pass through in a few seconds and phewwwsh… go right back into the enlightened self because they remember, "Oh this is just human weather. This is just the human condition resurfacing, and it's all right.”

Now if you twist around, become upset with yourself for falling back to sleep, then you’re going to prevent the waking up again for a longer period of time. So allow for the waking up and the falling asleep, and I guarantee you that as time goes on and you practice more and more being here in the present moment you'll stay awake longer… longer and longer.


“There is nothing one must do except be awake in the moment, and everything else takes care of itself. It takes trust and surrender to live this way, letting life unfold for you rather than directing it yourself with the human mind. Realize that the self is eternal consciousness which never changes, can never be harmed, and never dies. It doesn't need to be fixed or healed, it doesn't have to evolve. The real you is already whole... it's not a process. Realizing this frees you from the human condition. You have found what you are looking for right here in this moment, in the very fact that you are aware intelligence, with or without the body. Once direct experience of who you really are has taken place and it is brought into daily life, wholeness and peace become your natural way. This results in living your enlightenment in this lifetime, which automatically creates the beautiful life you always wanted. As you radiate this grace to others around you it may seem like a brand new way of being in life—and it is. It is lucid living. The first challenge is to become lucid, rather than operating on automatic pilot through life. The next challenge is to maintain that lucidity without falling back to sleep into the human condition. Stopping the mind is the first step. This is where it begins. It only deepens from there.” Christine Breese

“Now, forget everything you've just learned and be still. Know yourself as wise, loving, intelligent, eternal consciousness that never needed to change or fix anything in the first place. Then see what happens... It will be a pleasant surprise!”

Christine Breese








http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q182-tO8K8A


http://www.umsonline.org/SpiritualVideo ... Awaken.htm
User avatar
Kunga
Posts: 2333
Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:04 am
Contact:

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Kunga »

Christine Breese wrote: Know yourself as wise, loving, intelligent, eternal consciousness that never needed to change or fix anything
This is so refreshing ....why dosn't anyone here ever talk like this ?
Dennis Mahar
Posts: 4082
Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 9:03 pm

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Dennis Mahar »

That's the way you get it Sandy.
An intuitive grasp if you like.
I recognised transformation in you a long time ago and have celebrated it.

The man's way is to put it together rationally.
the track of reasons that proves it.

All is empty is the potty training.
empty is empty is the advanced course.

Cathy Preston is bringing 'empty is empty' alive remarkably well.
User avatar
Kunga
Posts: 2333
Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:04 am
Contact:

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Kunga »

I was once a joyous loving person...full of life and vibrant energy....
I have been beaten down and desperate for something to bring me back to life....
This woman [Breese], has spoken the truth that brought me back..
Not quite healed, still broken, but I will never listen to any misogynist
or anyone else that makes me feel incompetent.
You have to stand guard to protect your mind from negativity....
anything that seeks to destroy the beauty in your heart.
Dennis Mahar
Posts: 4082
Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 9:03 pm

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Try this on for size.
The culture is a 'cookie cutter' that generates a way of being for girls that has them fit themselves up as sex toys in order to get a bloke to work on their requirements.
Granted, many women today have stepped away from that.
Still, the culture is overwhelmingly misogynist.

The GF curriculum invites another possibility for women.
That is,
the development of a rational response to Life.
This is not mysoginistic.
User avatar
Dan Rowden
Posts: 5739
Joined: Sun Sep 09, 2001 8:03 pm
Contact:

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Dan Rowden »

Kunga wrote:
Christine Breese wrote: Know yourself as wise, loving, intelligent, eternal consciousness that never needed to change or fix anything
This is so refreshing ....why dosn't anyone here ever talk like this ?
Because it's New Age stupidity.
User avatar
Kunga
Posts: 2333
Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:04 am
Contact:

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Kunga »

Dan Rowden wrote:Because it's New Age stupidity.
Yeah....one should just drink themselves to death instead, right ?
User avatar
Kunga
Posts: 2333
Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:04 am
Contact:

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Kunga »

Dennis Mahar wrote:The GF curriculum invites another possibility for women.
That is,
the development of a rational response to Life.
This is not mysoginistic.
Women don't need men to teach them
about rationality....look how insane this world is !
Mans response is to kill, drill, and fill.
It makes me ill.
Take a pill and chill.
Will.
I'm out of dill.
User avatar
Cahoot
Posts: 1573
Joined: Wed Apr 22, 2009 12:02 am

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Cahoot »

Kunga wrote:I was once a joyous loving person...full of life and vibrant energy....
I have been beaten down and desperate for something to bring me back to life....
This woman [Breese], has spoken the truth that brought me back..
Not quite healed, still broken, but I will never listen to any misogynist
or anyone else that makes me feel incompetent.
You have to stand guard to protect your mind from negativity....
anything that seeks to destroy the beauty in your heart.
Kunga wrote:
Dan Rowden wrote:Because it's New Age stupidity.
Yeah....one should just drink themselves to death instead, right ?
Is the intent of your last comment to protect your mind from negativity?
User avatar
Kunga
Posts: 2333
Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:04 am
Contact:

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Kunga »

Cahoot wrote:Is the intent of your last comment to protect your mind from negativity?
Partly that, and partly just pointing out that some people like to drink alcohol (which is a depressant), to pacify their sufferring,
and some get drunk on love and antidepressant thinking....your body chemistry changes according to your moods/emotions. I am prone to depression and alcohol makes me even more depressed....I'd rather think possitive and eat healthy to heal myself.

You have no idea how much I have suffered due to saying and hearing negative words and thoughts...it is poison for the heart.
Also it is a fact that people who repress love , have heart problems more than those that freely express love. Funny that.

Even plants respond to how they are treated.... they flourish with loving care.
So, I think it's only rational and logical that caring and possitive thinking is wiser than uncaring and negative thinking.

The truth liberates, not suffocates.
Dennis Mahar
Posts: 4082
Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 9:03 pm

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Breese isn't enlightened in the fullest sense in the context of the lotus flower fully opened to the infinite.
where all viewpoints are known.
She is opened somewhat.
Her conditioning is 'blown'.
her automatic stimulus/response, stimulus/response, stimulus/response is no longer solid in her.
when that event happens there's an explosion of love, joy, generosity, effusiveness,
it's called Beginner's Mind.

She has been told how life is and who she is all her life by her culture and now she has a new paradigm.

Her mood is fantastic.
But she hasn't got a clue about what happened mentally.
She gushes cliches.
She needs education in the matter.

In her fresh, new paradigm she still has to live in her old world of people living the old paradigm.
She might get it but her mother, father, sister, boyfriend, boss don't.
Her ultra positive gushing is going to get her old people pissed off.
In time she will give up her breakthrough and go back to fitting in with the crowd who will hassle her about her 'nutty episode'
She will suffer.

Get the picture?
It ain't 'wine and roses' in the transformation business.

All this is completely understood.
Well trodden path.
It ain't Alice in Wonderland.

You've got some transformation Sandy,
for it to be stabilised and brought to bear full fruit,
hard won Wisdom is necessary.

No one wants a fake, plastic, temporary, nutty episode of 'love' spewed in their face,
What is required is the cold, hard facts.
User avatar
Talking Ass
Posts: 846
Joined: Sun Jun 26, 2011 12:20 am

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Talking Ass »

Then perhaps you will be able to say: "I went on a trip to Hell and in that place, a poisoned place where great lies were recited and held up as great truths, my soul came under that influence and I felt and knew what it is to die alive. I drank the poisons they called 'liberation' and felt them strangle me. To some extent I died with them. But then something shifted, I don't know how. It wasn't my karma to deal with! I didn't invent it and it isn't mine to claim. I can leave it. After feeling that death, I came back into life, but with new knowledge and better understanding of compassion..."
fiat mihi
Dennis Mahar
Posts: 4082
Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 9:03 pm

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Dennis Mahar »

It looks like you've gestalted some wisdom there Alex.
User avatar
Kunga
Posts: 2333
Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:04 am
Contact:

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Kunga »

Dennis Mahar wrote:Breese isn't enlightened in the fullest sense in the context of the lotus flower fully opened to the infinite.
That is your opinion.
Dennis Mahar wrote:explosion of love, joy, generosity, effusiveness,
it's called Beginner's Mind.
That's exactly where we should be/stay....ask Huang Po ;)
Dennis Mahar wrote:She needs education in the matter.
You could stand to learn a thing or two yourself from her.
http://christinebreese.wordpress.com/ch ... biography/
Dennis Mahar wrote:In time she will give up her breakthrough and go back to fitting in with the crowd who will hassle her about her 'nutty episode'
She will suffer.
How do you know she hasn't already been there/done that before ? I think you are wrong in your judgement of her. She is beyond all that already....her wisdom is beyond her years....no going back.
Dennis Mahar wrote:No one wants a fake, plastic, temporary, nutty episode of 'love' spewed in their face,
What is required is the cold, hard facts.
The hard and cold are fake.
User avatar
Kunga
Posts: 2333
Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:04 am
Contact:

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Kunga »

Talking Ass wrote:Then perhaps you will be able to say: "I went on a trip to Hell and in that place, a poisoned place where great lies were recited and held up as great truths, my soul came under that influence and I felt and knew what it is to die alive. I drank the poisons they called 'liberation' and felt them strangle me. To some extent I died with them. But then something shifted, I don't know how. It wasn't my karma to deal with! I didn't invent it and it isn't mine to claim. I can leave it. After feeling that death, I came back into life, but with new knowledge and better understanding of compassion..."

Beautiful ! That's exactly it Alex .
Dennis Mahar
Posts: 4082
Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 9:03 pm

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Dennis Mahar »

it's empty and meaningless that its empty and meaningless

empty is empty

you've fallen for form again.
and made it meaningful.

what is causes/conditions lacks inherent existence and is ultimately meaningless.

Breeses World probably involves a meeting with her manager monday morning who will have a fax from the accountant detailing the weekends book and cd sales.
a photo shoot for the cover of 'enlightenment weekly' will be set up for wednesday.
tuesday a dentist appointment for teeth whitening
opthalmologist to get that glistening look in the eyes.
Osho took a handful of valium to get that ethereal, dreamy, other-worldly, spiritual look about him,
perhaps there'll be a bit of that.

friday a hook up with Deepak to canvas improved marketing strategies.
User avatar
Kunga
Posts: 2333
Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:04 am
Contact:

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Kunga »

So what...if that were all true...it still wouldn't change consciousness , which survives through anything, and everything, as it has since forever....the world is a stage, and we are merely the actors....
Dennis Mahar
Posts: 4082
Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 9:03 pm

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Dennis Mahar »

the world is a stage, and we are merely the actors
thanks for that.

OK,
Breese to recycle bin.
empty recycle bin.
free as a bird.
User avatar
Kunga
Posts: 2333
Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:04 am
Contact:

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Kunga »

I'm gonna recycle bin you in a minute :)
User avatar
Talking Ass
Posts: 846
Joined: Sun Jun 26, 2011 12:20 am

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Talking Ass »

One thing I note---by way of criticism---in Breese's exposition, and I think it is an important one, is that she seems to refer to a 'state of being', this thing called 'enlightenment'. As you know, I consider this term very flawed and problematic. There is only 'enlightenment' of a given person in a given time, and the only one who can know it is the one who lives in it. It is not akin to a 'color' of a texture or anything else that can be known. True, they say that you (the non-enlightened I assume) can 'feel' it when in the presence of people who are it, and they also say that the effect of having that 'darshan' is transformative: it produces effects that radiate outward, in the present and down through time. The notion of 'enlightenment' is in fact connected (Vedically) back up the cycle of creation to an unmanifested divine 'energy' or awareness or consciousness. In Vedic terms, to become enlightened is to come to the end of connection with this manifested world and to disappear back into some completely 'other'. When you achieve 'enlightenment', as Ramakrishna stated and lived (if you consider that a valid reference), 'the body falls away'. Meaning, you simply no longer care for life or death. It just doesn't matter. You 're-absorb' if you will into what we have all come out of.

But that is not at all all that Vedic ideas are about. They offer a picture of 'the world' [of people, society, etc.] and a way for people to act and live in the world. If you are ready to 'check-out' of the world then what can anyone say to you? If, like with Ramakrishna, your have that all-encompassing vision and it literally 'slays' your whole connecting link with the manifested world, what possible argument would you come up with? Would you say, Hey! No! Don't go! Stay!

But there is another sort of model. And that is the model of the Sage who by his-her presence and personality, produced effects in other people. People who most definitely are in the world, active in it. Say Krishnamurti and others like him. You still go on living---you must still go on living---and you still function within the cultural matrix like a 'good citizen'. You have a family, a job, goals, aspirations, etc. You respond to the 'darshan' by bringing some part of it into your self, into your world.

Then there is the Western model: our model. It is what has made us what we are right now (if we are indeed Westerners: Americans, Europeans, Australians, etc. Or as Liberty Sea said even the whole world right now has somehow been subsumed within Western concerns...)

But I would like to suggest that the notion of 'enlightenment' is a very questionable notion 'for us'. Not the least reason being we do not seem to be mystics on the order of Ramakrishna nor does this state even seem to exist as a category for us. Our being and our minds are of another sort.

My criticism of Breese is that she speaks about a 'state' when, in our traditions, we define ourselves through what we do. The way we are in the world is our action in the world. If there is 'enlightenment', it is 'enlightened action' on one level or another but never as a static 'state' without connection to the present.

I am trying to bring this back to Kunga (whose name is apparently Sandy) and a way and a means to speak about 'this place' and its denizens, for example Dan or David or Dennis. What IS IT they are speaking about? (A rhetorical question). It obviously means a great deal to them. It is placed on a top-category shelf. It is a knowledge of [something] that supercedes all other possible knowing. There is nothing that compares with [it] and no possible argument against [it]. In truth, in very truth (and correct me if I am wrong on this) it cannot and does not 'care' at all about Sandy or really anyone! I mean this in the sense of 'take into consideration'. I suggest it is 'pure abstraction' in operation. In this sense, and oh so very much in this sense, it is a boy's game. To play within it, you have to know [sense, feel] the terms of it and you have to be willing to 'play rough'. It is a kind of pseudo-philosophical rough-house where [to be really honest] a girl cannot ever be seen to win! [And if you think that 'winning' is not part of the game, oh how mistaken you are!]. It asserts its 'truths' and knocks down any other, competing truth. It plays to win.

Why would I describe it as a 'hell' and is this a 'fair' term? I think I use the term in this way because I do not see 'it' as a 'voluntary' place, but a place one arrives in 'as a result of'. My understanding of 'hells' (in this Sartrian sense) is that we just sort of wind up there without really understanding how we got there, but we also [once there] claim it and defend it. I have seen this time and time again over the years I have observed people. We wind up in a 'hell' but then we defend it, explain it, define all the reasons for it, and [importantly] resist all efforts to suggest this might not be the best way to spend one's time! Isn't one of the core myths of our age that we kill the messenger who comes to open the prison gates? Isn't it, then, that we struggle against everything that might liberate us from the 'hell' we have found ourselves in?

When I read Dennis, I often hear him speak exaltingly of some 'state' of realization that, I assume, has come to him as a resut of whatever it is he has done, felt, seen, understood. It must be REALLY VALUABLE if it produces such feelings. And if they are not feelings, what are they? Not-feelings? Or are they strictly 'rational ideas' that produce things LIKE feelings? One senses that Dennis is not incapable of the desire to share his 'feeling'. A bubbly sense of freedom is it? A realization that surges up out of what is more normally aparthy, pain and suffering (our human lot, quite often). I have always been a little puzzled by this...

The way I see it, we achieve fulfilment not with a 'state' but with the depth and quality of our engagements. You cannot ever achieve 'happiness' since it doesn't exist as a separate state. You might be happy or fulfilled through an inexpressable 'energy' that arises out of ones engagements, when those engagements bring together the fulness of your being, your heart and your mind, your rational mind and your love, your independance and your connection to other people (or nature...or the world), but I reject the idea that this comes to us as a result of achieving some 'state'.

Most likely this is why I tend to be the champion of a Judeo-Christian value-structure, not the least reason being that these Eastern modalities are 'non-authentic' to us. To undertsand ourselves we have to understand what has produced our own self (Knowing Who You Are), and to know this is to understand a way of being that defines itself through how it engages with life, people, doing, expressing and all the rest. But to even speak about that means to define oneself in a community of one sort or another: even in a dysfunctional community of barking dogs, or a forum of barking boys.

The 'real questions' and the 'real problems', it seems to me, are only infrequently brought up.
fiat mihi
User avatar
Kunga
Posts: 2333
Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:04 am
Contact:

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Kunga »

Talking Ass wrote:One thing I note---by way of criticism---in Breese's exposition, and I think it is an important one, is that she seems to refer to a 'state of being', this thing called 'enlightenment'. As you know, I consider this term very flawed and problematic.
Watch the video again (The first one in the first post in this thread):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q182-tO8K8A


Enlightenment is just the begining. Once you figure out who/what you really are....then there is a "deepening" of this initial Enlightenment...also I think once it is clear in your head, it won't seem flawed/problematic. I once believed in a Creator God, but had absolutely no concept of what he/it was....this(Consciousness/Awareness) seems very rational and logical (how I comprehend "God" now).

Think of what is left if there is nothing (no physical manifestations). That is "it". (Awareness/Consciousness).

I am at work now, and can't concentrate fully , but will try to answer more of your very important questions when I get home tonight.
Dennis Mahar
Posts: 4082
Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 9:03 pm

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Dennis Mahar »

There's a subtle distinction about 'love'.

People can be disposed toward 'love' as an ideological commitment.
Talk about it endlessly.
Bring it into each and every conversation.
Holding it up and putting it forward.

And yet,
in their very own bodymind,
not BE that.

in their very own bodymind,
as 'love' is talked 'about',
abides irritability, restlessness, discontent.

the persistent peppering of 'love' in conversations as something talked 'about',
as if it's the cure-all or winning formula,

what you get is the love Nazi.

faking love.

the actual experience worth having is the moments you catch yourself in the act of 'faking it'
it's there, in that,
where you 'get' your own conditioned machinery,
your comfort zone responses,
your Story,

'get' that and Being is opened up.
that's when you get love,
love of being.

Alex,
away from the forum,
are you sharpening a knife,
which you bring back to the forum,
and stick it in?
User avatar
Kunga
Posts: 2333
Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:04 am
Contact:

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Kunga »

I know what you're talking about Dennis....we all do...we're conditioned...
Action speaks louder than words, don't you think ?
I hate it when someone says "I love you", and expects me to say it back....I cringe...I usually don't say it back (cause I'm usually irritated by most people), but out of compassion (like my poor aging mother), I will sometimes not want to hurt her feelings ( she is sooooooooo sensitive),
I swear, I'm surrounded by weak sensitive sloppy love conditioned people. I feel like a rock in comparrison.
Dennis Mahar
Posts: 4082
Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 9:03 pm

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Dennis Mahar »

One can be in a 'very dark place' and not know it because it's familiar.
It has become one's winning formula.

The Buddha, Nagarjuna, pre-socratic greeks, Neitschke, Heidegger to name a few
were not 'talking about' being.
the task was unconcealment of being.
to bring being to light.

the conversation for transformation isn't a list of complaints, prejudices or judgements.
talking about.

In Heidegger's case he made Dasein 'stand out' and interrogated that.
Being-in-a World,
Being with others,
Being-in-action
the insights garnered 'show' being.
User avatar
Kunga
Posts: 2333
Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:04 am
Contact:

Re: Enlightenment / Knowing Who You Are

Post by Kunga »

Sorry Alex...I spent about an hour replying to your post, and forgot about the time limit, and I got logged out, and lost it all !!!
I don't have the energy to start over again .

Essentially what I said was :

1. Enlightenment is the natural state of everything. No one is Enlightened. It is naturally occurring and spontaneously present. Some people have more experience being aware of this , and it is more obvious .

2. QRS [Quinn, Rowdan, Solway] are decent, compassionate, and very tolerant, despite anything else [the misogyny], which I don't really pay that much attension to anymore.
Locked