Neo Advaita vs. Classical Advaita

[Still_Waters]

Originally Posted by 7luminaries

I've posted on SF since 2010 at least...and I've meditated and consciously walked my journey almost from birth. I've always been interested in energy work and healing...in the mediation and handling of the marriage of the less dense and the more dense (physical, temporal) aspects of What Is. I've always seen and known of the direct manifestation of spirit as temporal reality, that there is no distance...all distance and all separation are illusory. I can't tell you why I know...I've always known whilst always having sought to know more deeply and more truly. But uncovering the permutations of this truth in our manifest existence have taken a lifetime of ever deeper and more fearless engagement, not only with myself/Spirit but also with all others/Spirit and with all that is/Spirit.

Why did I seek to know more truly and more deeply? Same as most who walk their path, I would guess. To deal with the context of my life, to understand the nature of our manifest social reality and the larger truth of What Is. There is no hierarchy of truth. There is no hierarchy of the real. The One and the emptiness and the interbeing and the manifest reality are all the same...all equally "true" or "real". It matters not some aspects are unchanging and some are changing, or that some are unmanifest and foundational whilst some are emanated and temporal. All are equally of What Is. This is the truth I know, the way of the heart-led consciousness. The path of the awakened heart-led consciousness is the way of ever deeper engagement with all that is, in this (equally timeless and yet temporal and changing) moment and place.

There was no one moment of awakening over a lifetime, only a deepening and an expanding. There was only one spot in time...which felt rather long (LOL)...where I consciously felt I was unmoored from reality and even sanity. This is the crucible, the point of conscious and subtle metamorphosis, where all you are is consciously-heart led and where the rational ways, cultural artifacts and propaganda, and personal justifications, arguments and propositions of the ego and the mental realm become ever more all aligned with the truth of What Is...or else they simply fall away. My core experience has been that if you consciously walk your path over many years, it typically includes a conscious discipline in lovingkindness, radical forgiveness, discipline, and restraint in one's personal life (toward all but also with regard to sexuality), one which honours the highest good of others equally to the self and is free of exploitation and touch that does not include an authentic love for and commitment to the other's highest good on all levels. I have seen that this simple practice of love and service is widely embraced at deeper levels of awareness, but is rejected by many until that point, as its truth in love is so deeply grounded, holistic, and integrative. It is exactly that Be. Love. Now. manifest in our daily ways of intent, thought, word, and deed. In the being and the doing. This has lived meaning not only for self and others, but also in our relationships with our environment, i.e., the world around us and all other life on the planet -- and beyond.

Additionally, my experience has been that over years of meditation, particularly focused meditation, lucid yoga nidra, and energy work for growth and healing, you engage directly in interbeing with the consciousness of one or several or many others as a way of being...and there is only utter transparency, authenticity, serenity, and the deepest love and acceptance of all in spirit. It is where the highest good of all is always the point of origin. These too are other paths to realisation of the truth of Be. Love. Now., but I will say without reservation that they will only take you so far if you are not also on the path of love and service to others equally to self (discussed in prior paragraph).

To put a fine point on it, with the experiences routinely had as we walk our paths, in my experience it becomes self-evident (whilst in the crucible, if not sooner) that we can no longer hide from or "shelve" or "contain" the love you are, the truth you are, and the love and the truth that others are...and likewise for all that is. You must directly apprehend and embrace it, in all its terrifying and immense splendour. You are that. And so is everyone else. (of course...you can choose to deny all that is, even to consciously deny it...so "must" here is simply standing for the revelation that you are that).

All that we see around us, the exploitation, the domination and control, the hierarchies of power and greed...all that I rejected in simple love and solidarity, all that I rejected intellectually and on the basis of a passion for social justice and inherent human dignity and equality of worth...all those things are substantiated beyond all reckoning, reaffirmed in the unyielding light and love of What Is. And all the rest is meaningless and illusory, the props of the violent, the fearful, and the desperate -- and of their fear and loathing of What Is. That is what we meet in love and forgiveness, with great compassion but also with unyielding discipline, courage, strength, and a simple truth which cannot be other than What it Is.

And this is what my understanding of One and emptiness, of individuated consciousness in interbeing and unity has shown me -- this truth of What Is. Be love now, as Ram Dass says. Be. Love. Now. This is the middle way of radical lovingkindness and radical equanimity in being and doing. The truth is, the way of authentic love in our individuated temporal reality of interbeing and unity, of yin and yang, is the same core truth of What Is. There is no higher or deeper truth. There is only soaring higher and immersing more deeply into this one truth.

Peace & blessings
7L

Thanks for taking the time to share all that. Breakthroughs happen in different ways for different people, and it always interests me to hear the HOW.

Thanks again for sharing.

[Still_Waters]

Originally Posted by shiningstars

Still_Waters

Reading these forums and questions like "What are the symptoms of awakening" etc. leads me to be grateful that when I started I was not taught to have expectations or even knowledge. Growing a flower bed is a practical matter, soil, sun, water, care. The outcome and "symptoms" is what will come if the flower bed is well looked after. Information overload sometimes is a hindrance.

shiningstars

That is a very wise point you are making.

My spiritual mentor never taught disciples to have expectations. She only recommended practices that were best suited to our individual temperaments. When revelations just happened that seemed incredulous at first, that was the point at which the deeper teachings started.

[jimrich]

Originally Posted by Still_Waters

My spiritual mentor never taught disciples to have expectations. She only recommended practices that were best suited to our individual temperaments. When revelations just happened that seemed incredulous at first, that was the point at which the deeper teachings started.

Still,
I'd be interested in reading more about your "spiritual mentor" and the process that you engaged in on the way to awakening or whatever happened.
Thanks,
jim

[shiningstars]

Originally Posted by Still_Waters

That is a very wise point you are making.

My spiritual mentor never taught disciples to have expectations. She only recommended practices that were best suited to our individual temperaments. When revelations just happened that seemed incredulous at first, that was the point at which the deeper teachings started.

Yes, it was how I was brought up too and I appreciated it ultimately.

shiningstars

[7luminaries]

Originally Posted by Still_Waters

Thanks for taking the time to share all that. Breakthroughs happen in different ways for different people, and it always interests me to hear the HOW.

Thanks again for sharing.

You're very welcome SW.

For me, it depends...I don't find I necessarily get anything out of anyone's intellectual revelations until they awaken to the heart led consciousness.
Of course, I normally will get a lot out of it at that point though

Also, normally, the day-to-day experiences and grounded perspectives others as they go about their living and being are very informative and interesting. These may or may not be presented as "spiritual" but nonetheless they are the most central to a person's spiritual journey. That is, they align most closely with a person's centre/spirit/higher self. Even if that person has not yet fully awakened to that centre.

If a person is kind and disciplined, etc., and then also consciously and intellectually supports perspectives and causes that align with the balance of lovingkindness and principled, authentically loving discipline that they are, then for myself, I know I am dealing with a fellow traveller.
And that likely what they say then will have particular resonance

Peace & blessings,
7L

[no1wakesup]

OurJimrich,

"I'd say that there is a "you" in "it" - just not a personal, egoic one, plus there is no need for any communication in "it" since there's only one consciousness, hence no 'you', 'me', 'I', 'us', 'we', etc. or even thoughts as in ordinary communications between apparent individuals. But out here, words are apparently needed (unless we read minds, LOL). "

The only kind of you there is is personal, is egoic, is separate and linear (time). The very idea that there is a "one" can only be there in perspective to a "two" in place. Beyond those points... or any variation thereof, is not "oneness" anymore. There is no point or perspective of awareness, unless of course, expressed wakefully or unconsciously (which it is always doing). Before that final boundary, between an apparent "me" and "other", is dissolved, separation will still be there. There is no you which blends in with anything you can call your own either. Your anchor of a solid separate self is gone.

Even when we practice being "aware", being "present" or in the "now", in that instantaneous gap between thoughts, even then the observer is still holding on to something to maintain awareness. Although the filter is much less burdensome in those gaps, there is still a pull to maintain a relationship with something else. Even this awareness, at all costs it seems, remains fundamentally concerned with maintaining an "in here" and "out there", subject and object, perceiver and perceived relationship. If that core relationship collapses, then liberation is there. Not in any way that can be claimed. It's more like a falling off or collapse of only an assumed primary reality. Whats left, (and what has always been) is a measureless quality (void) without any relationship

Normal reality is a dream, the irony is the one who wakes up to the dream is no longer their either. Dreamer and dream collapse

[jimrich]

Normal reality is a dream, the irony is the one who wakes up to the dream is no longer their either. Dreamer and dream collapse

There is not and never has been a "Dreamer or a dream". There is only "void" or "Empty phenomena" ~ Buddha

[jimrich]

Originally Posted by no1wakesup

OurJimrich,
"I'd say that there is a "you" in "it" - just not a personal, egoic one, plus there is no need for any communication in "it" since there's only one consciousness, hence no 'you', 'me', 'I', 'us', 'we', etc. or even thoughts as in ordinary communications between apparent individuals. But out here, words are apparently needed (unless we read minds, LOL). "

no1wakesup Whats left, (and what has always been) is a measureless quality (void) without any relationship

[7luminaries]

Originally Posted by no1wakesup

OurJimrich,

"I'd say that there is a "you" in "it" - just not a personal, egoic one, plus there is no need for any communication in "it" since there's only one consciousness, hence no 'you', 'me', 'I', 'us', 'we', etc. or even thoughts as in ordinary communications between apparent individuals. But out here, words are apparently needed (unless we read minds, LOL). "

The only kind of you there is is personal, is egoic, is separate and linear (time). The very idea that there is a "one" can only be there in perspective to a "two" in place. Beyond those points... or any variation thereof, is not "oneness" anymore. There is no point or perspective of awareness, unless of course, expressed wakefully or unconsciously (which it is always doing). Before that final boundary, between an apparent "me" and "other", is dissolved, separation will still be there. There is no you which blends in with anything you can call your own either. Your anchor of a solid separate self is gone.

Even when we practice being "aware", being "present" or in the "now", in that instantaneous gap between thoughts, even then the observer is still holding on to something to maintain awareness. Although the filter is much less burdensome in those gaps, there is still a pull to maintain a relationship with something else. Even this awareness, at all costs it seems, remains fundamentally concerned with maintaining an "in here" and "out there", subject and object, perceiver and perceived relationship. If that core relationship collapses, then liberation is there. Not in any way that can be claimed. It's more like a falling off or collapse of only an assumed primary reality. Whats left, (and what has always been) is a measureless quality (void) without any relationship

Normal reality is a dream, the irony is the one who wakes up to the dream is no longer their either. Dreamer and dream collapse

There is not and never has been a "Dreamer or a dream". There is only "void" or "Empty phenomena" ~ Buddha

The emptiness is the timeless ground of being from which all that is momentary arises. All are equally real...some (void) are timeless and formless...some are temporal forms.

There is more...there is always more. There is what is beyond emptiness and form. There is more beyond consciousness which rests in emptiness or agitates and seeks in individuated temporal form. But that is largely beyond our knowing. And so we contemplate what can be seen as a spectrum of polarity, from emptiness to emanation. From emanation to emptiness.

Meanwhile, the heart knows a deeper truth. Be love now And know that you are that. In emptiness and in form, and in the relationship and movement of emanation and returning that exists between them. So to speak.

Peace & blessings,
7L

[no1wakesup]

Originally Posted by 7luminaries

The emptiness is the timeless ground of being from which all that is momentary arises. All are equally real...some (void) are timeless and formless...some are temporal forms.

There is more...there is always more. There is what is beyond emptiness and form. There is more beyond consciousness which rests in emptiness or agitates and seeks in individuated temporal form. But that is largely beyond our knowing. And so we contemplate what can be seen as a spectrum of polarity, from emptiness to emanation. From emanation to emptiness.

Meanwhile, the heart knows a deeper truth. Be love now And know that you are that. In emptiness and in form, and in the relationship and movement of emanation and returning that exists between them. So to speak.

Peace & blessings,
7L

Nothing, not even from the vaguest point in perception, which persistently believes itself on the search or path to enlightenment, is left when liberation is there. The need to maintain somethingness comes from our egos refusal and ultimate denile to face what it interprets as anialation.

Imagine you where this ground of being and you where holding a mask in your hand. Then suddenly you would put that mask on, playing which ever role imaginable. At times you would not know you had the mask on and other times you would. There would be times you would suddenly realize you had the mask on and discard it forever and other occasions you would notice it on but some how conviniently determine for yourself that the mask is part of God too!!. However, since it is the mask which reconciles that fact, liberation seems to be put off.

Now this is the best part, the great F U moment for that lingering somethingness which needs to remain in the picture at all cost...

...that part you thought was the ground of being is actually still dual. There is still someone and a mask. Still perceiver and percieved, subject and object. It is this awareness which has the potential to realize itself as primary.

Once the light in the projector is seen as the primary source from which the film of experience can play out, then the entire projector collapses. Light is a quality of the ground of being and so is the film it illuminates.

There is nothing beyond that actual ground of being which remains because there is nothing in place before it. All that comes from this is wakeful or unconscious expression. Its a point from which everything imminates yet there is no location where that point is grounded.

This is not understood or realized conceptually. It is a shift which observes every fabric of duality by first exposing the core and deepest attatcment of all..the anchored believe that you are separate