Giving up on enlightenment

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Mohamed
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Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Mohamed »

I’m making this thread to show the members of this forum how the journey can end too early.
I want to be really honest about the reasons I’m doing this.

First you should know who I am:
My real name is Mohamed Ahmed, I’m 26 years old and live in south-west Germany.
I know this Forum from Dan Rowdens Youtube channel Menoftheinfinite.

I’ve been lucky enough to find his channel trough Dan’s strategic video response to existentialist cat.

I can’t say enough how much this saved me and changed me.
Every other YouTube Atheist videos are shit compared to what I found on the menoftheinfinite channel. This led me to read and hear to almost anything I could find on the Genius Realms.

But after all of that, I’m finding enlightenment to be impossible for me, but not for the reasons, that Orenholt made in his Thread “No Enlightenment for me thanks”.

I don’t want make up any noble excuse for me giving up on it.

Here are my reasons:

1. I love my life and it’s a very happy life.
2. I don’t think, that I have what it takes to become enlightened.
3. I fear, that even if would try, I would end up somewhere in the middle and become broken.

To summarize it: At this moment in my life, the forces, that would drive me to enlightenment, are very weak.

Even though I’m saying this, I can’t help but come back to this place and check out how the others are doing and what I’m seeing isn’t good.

I haven’t met anyone in my life that showed real interest in philosophy beside me and most of the members on this forum aren’t doing much better.


Here some questions, that I’m left with:

1. Is all hope lost for humanity to become at least more enlightened?
2. Is it better to give up and keep what wisdom you have now, instead of trying to become enlightened, when you don’t have the motivation?
3. What happens to people who turn back before the journey ends? How do they live after that?

Mohamed Ahmed
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Cahoot
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Cahoot »

1. Is all hope lost for humanity to become at least more enlightened?
- What concern is that of yours?

2. Is it better to give up and keep what wisdom you have now, instead of trying to become enlightened, when you don’t have the motivation?
- To discover your true motivation, don’t plan ahead. Be sure you want to know.

3. What happens to people who turn back before the journey ends? How do they live after that?
- Do you jest? Cliches are everywhere. Begin with assumptions.
Mohamed
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Mohamed »

Cahoot wrote:1. Is all hope lost for humanity to become at least more enlightened?
- What concern is that of yours?

2. Is it better to give up and keep what wisdom you have now, instead of trying to become enlightened, when you don’t have the motivation?
- To discover your true motivation, don’t plan ahead. Be sure you want to know.

3. What happens to people who turn back before the journey ends? How do they live after that?
- Do you jest? Cliches are everywhere. Begin with assumptions.
1. I'd like to think, that humanity will survive and I don't think it can happen without it becoming more enlightened. What I'm seeing is that most of those who have an honest interest for truth fail at end.

2. I'm not looking for my true motivation. I fear that, without the true motivation it will do more damage than good.
Or more openly said, I don't want to have that motivation because I fear what will happen of "me".

3. I probably want to know the impossible. How to turn back and not become a cliche.
Pam Seeback
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Pam Seeback »

I probably want to know the impossible. How to turn back and not become a cliche.
It is impossible to turn back if discovering the truth of the nature of reality has gripped your consciousness as a vice grips a piece of wood. Are you gripped?
TheImmanent
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by TheImmanent »

Enlightenment is what you are. There is no one giving up on it. There is the concept of someone who does, a passing experience, but that is not a being.
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Orenholt
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Orenholt »

Why is this thread from 2009 being bumped up to the top?
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Cahoot
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Cahoot »

Orenholt wrote:Why is this thread from 2009 being bumped up to the top?
Get a grip. 2009 was a good year.
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Orenholt
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Orenholt »

Cahoot wrote:
Orenholt wrote:Why is this thread from 2009 being bumped up to the top?
Get a grip. 2009 was a good year.
Oops.. I just realized I misread the date of the thread. :P
Sabi
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Sabi »

Mohamed wrote:I’m making this thread to show the members of this forum how the journey can end too early.
I want to be really honest about the reasons I’m doing this.

First you should know who I am:
My real name is Mohamed Ahmed, I’m 26 years old and live in south-west Germany.
I know this Forum from Dan Rowdens Youtube channel Menoftheinfinite.

I’ve been lucky enough to find his channel trough Dan’s strategic video response to existentialist cat.

I can’t say enough how much this saved me and changed me.
Every other YouTube Atheist videos are shit compared to what I found on the menoftheinfinite channel. This led me to read and hear to almost anything I could find on the Genius Realms.

But after all of that, I’m finding enlightenment to be impossible for me, but not for the reasons, that Orenholt made in his Thread “No Enlightenment for me thanks”.

I don’t want make up any noble excuse for me giving up on it.

Here are my reasons:

1. I love my life and it’s a very happy life.
2. I don’t think, that I have what it takes to become enlightened.
3. I fear, that even if would try, I would end up somewhere in the middle and become broken.

To summarize it: At this moment in my life, the forces, that would drive me to enlightenment, are very weak.

Even though I’m saying this, I can’t help but come back to this place and check out how the others are doing and what I’m seeing isn’t good.

I haven’t met anyone in my life that showed real interest in philosophy beside me and most of the members on this forum aren’t doing much better.


Here some questions, that I’m left with:

1. Is all hope lost for humanity to become at least more enlightened?
2. Is it better to give up and keep what wisdom you have now, instead of trying to become enlightened, when you don’t have the motivation?
3. What happens to people who turn back before the journey ends? How do they live after that?

Mohamed Ahmed
[color=#008040]I'm sorry Mohamed Ahmed that you feel that it's better to give up and keep what wisdom you have right now. Life shouldn't be lived in a state of inertia. Every moment is an opportunity to have new discoveries and grow to understand that which is infinite, which is God. It is not up to you to turn back before the journey ends because life is linear and although you might think you are in control, you're not. Your body is just a vessel, and being in this planet is not your final destination, but a means to take you to another dimension. This planet is a testing place of enlightenment and growth. Sabi.[/color]
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Hi Mohamed!
Mohamed wrote:1. Is all hope lost for humanity to become at least more enlightened?
Do you mean there was more hope at an earlier stage, some point in history? Your question implies some kind of historical position and analysis, which might be true or not. The point is that any conclusion on "humanity" is necessarily limited and relative, just as all our sources of information are.

Perhaps you mean to ask "is all hope lost for myself to become at least more enlightened"?
2. Is it better to give up and keep what wisdom you have now, instead of trying to become enlightened, when you don’t have the motivation?
You might find out it's impossible to "keep" wisdom unless you enshrine it. The only way to keep it is to grow and develop toward "it". A lack of motivation can be a good thing or a bad thing, it depends. You say you love your life as it is: is that a result of how you look at it with "wise" judgment or do you mean a feeling? Maybe things are exactly right for you now and wisdom is also the ability to understand where you are and why. If you're happy with it, and you think you're wise enough to make that judgment, the most important thing is to develop confidence with that.
3. What happens to people who turn back before the journey ends? How do they live after that?
In my view there's always some phase of "disintegration", a breaking away from the herd in terms of conventional thinking and morality. There's a point when it becomes impossible to transpose oneself back simply because one is now too weak, too easily overwhelmed and doubting to just slot back in somewhere. Too much is seen and understood, too little motivation to participate and integrate again. It's somewhat of a cursed period, a " impoverished daily existence" (as David Quinn called it). Some people end up being medicated or worse. Nobody guarantees success, life is not "fair" that way, more like a haphazard undertaking.

It can be wise to turn back before one ends up "impoverished" like that because it's always wiser to calculate the costs before starting a project. There's actually a high degree of foolishness (holy foolishness?) to start upon a road which can take you so far from "good life". But I don't think it's that hard to just realize it's not for you at this point, this stage, while still not dismissing it as possibility for others. And who knows, life keeps changing, we keep growing and you might find yourself back on that road again, motivation or no motivation. Some processes are caused by forces and influences way beyond our grasp.
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Cahoot
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Cahoot »

Diebert, folks prefer addresses to hyperlinks. You should know that.
movingalways wrote:
I probably want to know the impossible. How to turn back and not become a cliche.
It is impossible to turn back if discovering the truth of the nature of reality has gripped your consciousness as a vice grips a piece of wood. Are you gripped?
That's right. Once it starts it will not stop. If the ego has a tremendous grip on your being, the uncontrollable momentum can be painful enough that stopping it becomes very important. It won't. You can't even put on the brakes. It will finish you off, maybe at night, and you awaken in the morning transformed.

Assumption 1. Enlightenment is great!
If you are in doubt you do not know, and this is why. If in doubt you see the world through those eyes and those eyes pass right over because all they see is all that they have known, and to see with those eyes only shows what they have seen, as now. Do you see? Conditions don’t matter. That is the whole point of the enterprise, of the achievement, of the arrival at the mountaintop is to see that wherever you are is where you are. That’s all it is, the slopes, the valleys, the top. You do not go anywhere, everywhere comes to you. Everywhere that is meant to be gazed upon comes to you, and it all has meaning gazing through those eyes you know. Some days you gaze in other ways, a subtle movement seen against the backdrop of still mind and once seen is known to always be. So you sit and meditate with closed eyes. Thoughts and then cease, and you know cease because you think, what? Suddenly you are aware of awareness and that makes you realize that for some indeterminate time, awareness has been dimensionless nothing. Because you have gone through this before the mind stays right where it is. Right at that edge where a thought appears all by itself, isolate, spreading out in the darkness like a slow motion silent fireworks in the night sky that says, what? But it is not a word or even a thought, it is awareness. Alert and saying, what? And without use of the senses because of staying right there in that moment without senses there is no need to sense more than it is, almost like a thought opening, a vision appears. In the same fashion as, what? A single vision, isolate, all that there is from the nothing, a vision of where you are. You see the room as clear and steady and still as a picture. You see details and the more you see, the more there is, everything clear and going nowhere. The light is white and somehow everywhere, in everything, a soft glow bright. You gaze for an indeterminate time. It is where you are. It holds steady until it transforms into another moment when you open your eyes, and you are still there, the same but different, the old way, then you just relax into that and witness that. It happens or it doesn’t happen, other things happen, all the time moving through time that sometimes jumps ahead and sometimes goes back, so that all just passes across the gaze with those meanings and thoughts for now, the Buddha gaze where all that is seen comes to be seen.
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ardy
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by ardy »

Mohamed: Your statements

1. Is all hope lost for humanity to become at least more enlightened?
2. Is it better to give up and keep what wisdom you have now, instead of trying to become enlightened, when you don’t have the motivation?
3. What happens to people who turn back before the journey ends? How do they live after that?


Humanity is a weird case at the best. Don't worry about them, they have been around for a couple of million years, good chance they will be here for another million. Humanity will go either sooner or later. It's not your concern as Cahoot says.

The wisdom you have now will dissipate as you move away from the 'road', you will be back into the general soup of unknowing. Prajna comes with the work unless you have god consciousness.

When you turn back it is not nice. I have done this, and it is like walking in shit! The world of discrimination becomes obvious to you and it's as if the light slowly goes out and you fall back into the comfort of the 'little' human condition. After a while all seems normal to you and all you are left with is the memory of what it was like living with upwellings of knowledge and no voices in your head. The play of the Guna's becomes clear as crystal to you as you spend most of your time in Rajas/Manas.

At least you are honest enough to admit where you are. It does not dictate where you will be though.....For the time being go back to sleep it is safer.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Dennis Mahar »

The only thing that's talked about is causes/conditions

little architects at the drawing board working up a blueprint.

then the 'pep talk'.

Theory of machines.
the way of imputing mind.
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Cahoot
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Cahoot »

The taciturn dilemma of uptight
Locked in the limitations
Of all that should be

"And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Cahoot wrote:Diebert, folks prefer addresses to hyperlinks. You should know that.
The author is named, the link goes to the board admin's own site and people can hover the link and figure it out. But you're always there to score a point because of what was said to you ten million seconds ago like every average & bitter wife does...
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Dennis Mahar wrote:The only thing that's talked about is causes/conditions

little architects at the drawing board working up a blueprint.

then the 'pep talk'.

Theory of machines.
the way of imputing mind.
There's so much violence in your bliss, Dennis. The little generator that could, all running by itself.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Is that vicious intent Diebert?
generated?

the only thing talked about is causes/conditions,
cannot be refuted.
dependent arising.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »


There's so much offense-defense in your reply, Dennis. The little generator that could, all steaming by itself.
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Cahoot
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Cahoot »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
Cahoot wrote:Diebert, folks prefer addresses to hyperlinks. You should know that.
The author is named, the link goes to the board admin's own site and people can hover the link and figure it out. But you're always there to score a point because of what was said to you ten million seconds ago like every average & bitter wife does...
Don’t be silly or petty, Diebert. Be a professional. Time is limited.

It’s a legitimate request, and a courtesy to those who would follow the link. I would like to. I am interested in what Quinn has to say, and interested to know which of his words you think are relevant to the conversation.

Your advice to avoid hyperlinks is wise. No telling what hothead is creating the link, or what might be going through his noggin. That you would abandon your own counsel is curious, but obviously something you must do.

After all the drama, how about the address?

And perhaps a reference to a specific work? (If it in fact was your intent to reference a specific work).
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Dennis Mahar »

The little generator that could, all steaming by itself.
We could all wear that one.
Bliss.
any more 'pep talk' coach?
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Getoriks
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Getoriks »

Hello Mohamed,

I understand your troubles. I have been there. To some degree, I still am there.

But you must throw off this self-doubt and self-pity, my friend. It does you no good, whether you decide to be worldly or spiritual. You must be confident and do your best, and not worry about "but what if I fail?" That attitude will get you nowhere, not in the material world and definitely not in the spiritual. Try to relax. The process of becoming enlightened is, aside from several major leaps in particular, a rather gradual process overall. It takes time. Not only will you find yourself stagnating, but you will also find yourself degenerating. Both are natural. Growth is never 100% forward and linear. From what I gather from your post, you seem to have a lofty character which recognizes and admits its own weaknesses, flaws, attachments, addictions, possessions, and obsessions. If I'm correct there, then I must encourage you to continue onward. It is much too dangerous for someone like you to turn back.

While you're developing, be sure to still take time to enjoy life. You need not feel any guilt or have any sense of mediocrity in that area. Yes, sometimes you must makes leaps of faith, endure austerity and discipline, and break bad habits no matter how painful initially. Sometimes you must "man up". However, at the same time, there's no need to brutalize, castigate, or hurt yourself. Though it is often hard to tell, there is all the difference between the epic challenge of enlightenment and a merely masochistic-tempered ego. I'm definitely not suggesting you slide into mindless ease. I'm simply saying, as you continue to strive onward, keep calm, because you will fail again and again. But it will be your calm, your tranquility, your grace, your focus that will allow you to keep marching onward in your evolution.

The teachers and some students around here are really helpful, but be sure to spend time reading the works of other teachers and the texts of old, too. It's okay to be aggressive once in a while and make violent bursts of effort toward becoming more enlightened. Again, I'm not saying to go soft and give in to self-satisfaction. All I'm saying is, don't be afraid, and don't be angry. Being upset or sad over your shortcomings will not help you in any way. You must remember that it is ultimately not up to you if you transform or not. Causality itself will have to decide. But you can be a happy man knowing that, no matter what, you try your best. Just say to yourself, "I will become enlightened." Before you know it, you'll realize you always were.

cheers
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Orenholt
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Orenholt »

1. I love my life and it’s a very happy life.
2. I don’t think, that I have what it takes to become enlightened.
3. I fear, that even if would try, I would end up somewhere in the middle and become broken.
1.) Being enlightened is not a bad thing.
2.) You'll never know if you don't try, but I think you can.
3.) That wouldn't happen. Being unenlightened is already a broken state so you wouldn't "become broken".
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Cahoot
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Cahoot »

ardy wrote:Humanity will go either sooner or later. It's not your concern as Cahoot says.
Hey ardy. Hmm, it wasn’t exactly rhetorical. I asked what concern it is of Mohamed, not that it wasn’t his concern. You inferred from an implication perceived only from a habit of interpretation.

Everybody does it. :)

Mohamed answered with his concern. He thinks about this, he sees failure, looking, fear, damage, fear, wanting, not becoming. He responded with the requested concerns.

Then I wrote about ways of seeing.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Rilke pointed out you're either in the 'lamenting chair' or the 'joy chair'.
settling somewhere.
encampment.

Mohamed is in the joy chair about his own life and Dan's video.

In the lamenting chair about a bunch of other stuff.

So what?
he's got 2 bucks each way.
a foot in both camps.
Riven.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Giving up on enlightenment

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Cahoot wrote:Your advice to avoid hyperlinks is wise. No telling what hothead is creating the link, or what might be going through his noggin. That you would abandon your own counsel is curious, but obviously something you must do.
It appears then you never understood my "counsel", hence your confusing remarks. Are you suggesting that a link called "http://blala.org/this/someartic..." helps in any way to determine what it is that one clicks on? My point at the time was that it might help to make first clear what one can expect, preferably with some quote or guidance. In this case I already quoted a phrase and provided the author in the link description leading to the source of that phrase. What I once or twice protested against were links with the description "something funny" or "this is so appropriate", leading often just to some video or image. Also dumping a link without explaining why it would be relevant for someone else would be bad form. Lets hope you understand the difference, this time.
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