Free Will and Enlightenment

Let's say we operate within a playground.

Inside, free will becomes movement through time and space. One is free to experience wavelength and churn that into reality.

This is not avoidable so far as I can see because co-creation with God, therefore separation from God, is what being inside is.

So, practically speaking, some sort of experience as time and space and as a personage separate from God is going to be the permanent event here.

However we are as free within those parameters as we consciously want to be.

Originally Posted by Cmt12

Yet, you've reached the end? Gone as far as you can go in your evolution and development, in your understanding?

This is how the ego operates - it convinces you that you've reached the end and blinds you from what you are unaware of, of what's possible.

I know it can come across like that.
It is more the realization that there never was anybody developing and going through an evolution.
Enlightenment is not a personal experience, it is as unpersonal as it gets.
Nobody profits. It is (in dualistic language) the opposite of unawareness of whats possible. It is the knowing, not believing, that possibilities are infinite.

Originally Posted by Cmt12

It says,
"Those negative thoughts, negative impulses, and imbalances? Yeah, don't worry about any of that. They will always be there but CONGRATS you're enlightened so you can stop now!"

You imagine a person believing he is awake. Or enlightenment as something added to the person.

Negativity is something that can only be seen in the context of the illusionary self. There is just what is.
Maybe nervousness when performing on stage can arise.
Maybe agitation in a dangerous situation for the body.
There is no worrying anymore, because it is bound to a sense of separation. Of hoping for something to be different or anticipating disaster - therefore worrying.
It is the realization that there is absolutely nobody there controlling and doing anything. Never was.

Luntrus

[Cmt12]

The questions weren't because I took offense or anything, but to get you to reconsider. The fact remains that you still experience suffering, so there is more development available for you.

I and everyone else who pursues this at some point falls into the same mindset you are describing. It seems it is inevitable. Eventually, it will normalize and you'll realize that not much has changed compared to what you first thought.

The mindset you've adopted is a coping mechanism rather than a cure for suffering. You can't see it now, just as I couldn't see it for the amount of time I held it, but hopefully it won't be too long so you can refocus yourself and get back to the search.

Originally Posted by Cmt12

The fact remains that you still experience suffering, so there is more development available for you.

Physical pain is something that happens to the body/mind.
That of course continues.

Suffering is a symptom of experiencing life as a separate self, as a person.

Originally Posted by Cmt12

The mindset you've adopted is a coping mechanism rather than a cure for suffering. You can't see it now, just as I couldn't see it for the amount of time I held it, but hopefully it won't be too long so you can refocus yourself and get back to the search.

Where is this person that can search anything?
It has absolutely no reality and never has. Never will.
There are no such thing as mindsets or coping mechanisms that have external reality outside of awareness.
I am not talking about "witnessing" or being present to the moment.
I am talking about that in which even witnessing and being present arises.
That Knowing "can" be known, actually it never knows anything other than that.
Even in the form of the personal illusionary self awareness only always experiences awareness rising in what appears to be objects, persons with egos etc.

When the self is dropped there is just what remains.
Then everything just is. Without a person who can adapt any mindset.

This is of course a point in which it can be an endless back and forth in discussion. ;)
Who knows if I am a psychopath or just really, really believe in being pure awareness, when in reality there are many things outside of awareness I can not see.
(this is not meant to be snappy, just the fact that there is a point in which
this "discussion" can become a back and forth on the same problem)

Luntrus

[Cmt12]

Yes, I'm aware of what you are describing - that you can just become pure awareness and lose yourself. It is an approach that many have taken to attempt to free themselves from suffering in all its different forms.

Originally Posted by Cmt12

Yes, I'm aware of what you are describing - that you can just become pure awareness and lose yourself. It is an approach that many have taken to attempt to free themselves from suffering in all its different forms.

Yeah that is true, many people go this route.
The problem though is, that the person/spiritual seeker always deep down believes that there will be some self left enjoying enlightenment.
Even if someone really means it when he sais "I want the self to disappear"
there is the underlying believe that there will be someone enjoying no-self. This is of course impossible.

You don't lose yourself in awareness like in trancendental meditation. (if thats what it feels like, I have never done trancendental meditation)

There is still the body/mind there but without a sense of self and separation. The body/mind, sense perceptions etc. just appear in awareness.
So visually everything looks the same of course.
The body/mind does what it has always done or starts talking about enlightenment in a spiritual forum after a while. ;)

But without a self, certain characteristics of the separate self as a consequence of course don't arise anymore like psychological suffering, a sense of lacking something that will come in the future if the search continues, or the fear of death.

For the self hearing this truth it is always at least confusing or will be put down as another state of mind, that will normalize itself and then the search continues.
The search has undoubtetly come to an end with the "death" of the self.

Luntrus

[Cmt12]

We pretty much agree. It's just what you call the self, I call the ego. And to get rid of it, you can't just decide it, but rather there is a long 'process' that I call Spiritual Development.

Originally Posted by Cmt12

We pretty much agree. It's just what you call the self, I call the ego. And to get rid of it, you can't just decide it, but rather there is a long 'process' that I call Spiritual Development.

Yes you could call it ego, sure - same thing.
Spiritual development sounds to me like there is someone developing (adding more), when the only thing that "works" is a deconstruct-ion of the ego.

But of course all words in this area are somewhat just shells. and somebody else might use "self" similarly to "awareness".
What you call "spiritual "development someone else might call "letting go and dying".

Luntrus

[kkfern]

it is not that we have free will so much as they spirit cannot control or interfere with us. they lack that ability.

kk

[LadyMay]

Originally Posted by luntrusreality

It is more the realization that there never was anybody developing and going through an evolution.

And this is why I dislike the term 'spiritual evolution'. It doesn't exist.

"You can't wake a person who's pretending to be asleep". :)