What if you're missing the purpose?

by journey-on 161 Replies latest jw friends

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  JamesThomas

  Journey-on:

  There's that expression again, the one that confuses me. I'm going to keep working on it. But I continue to be baffled as to how one peels away the layers of the onion to get to core of one's true self. Is the true self your spirit (who/what you are sans personality)? Is it the intelligent creative force manifesting through your individual body temple?

  I can only suggest starting with nothing. Let go of everything everyone (including me) has ever told you about true being. Forget the onion. Forget spirit. Just sit and nonjudgmentally investigate inwards and try to find what you really are. This may mainly require seeing what you are not. For example run through a mental list of everything you believe yourself to be. Is what is closer than the list, that which is seeing the list, contained in anyway within the list? Look some more. You're simple looking for what is real and authentic...right here, right now.

  I suggest reading: The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle. If you have already, it may be time to read it again. I read the damn thing seven or eight times...but then I'm a fool.

  I think it's the individuality that IS important. If you strip away this, then what is left is nothing unique.

  This would appear to make sense on the surface. But as far as what is genuine about you, it's not at all true. When the facade of individuality, of little broken entity-ness, is seen through, what remains is the precious reality of a bottomless moment which is always a mystery, always unique.....and you're it.

  Cog:

  People get much accomplished every day, but of how much benefit is it, short term or long term? How much harm do we inadvertently cause when we are not aware of reality.

  Exactly. Accomplishment within realization of what is real, is an act of holistic enrichment because the actual unity of existence is participating, rather than deeds done within a sense of isolated-self which may be harmful to both people and planet even if the original goal was meant well.

  j
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  cognizant dissident

  Accomplishment within realization of what is real, is an act of holistic enrichment because the actual unity of existence is participating, rather than deeds done within a sense of isolated-self which may be harmful to both people and planet even if the original goal was meant well.

  Yes, that is what I was referring to earlier in my example of harming the environment. Most of the world lives in delusion and fantasy because they deny the interconnectededness of all living things on this planet both interspecies and intraspecies. Because they deny this interconnectedness and maintain their illusion of separateness, they believe they can continue to consume/hoard for themselves in the short term and deny that in the end they harm themselves, their children and the rest of the world due to their inability/unwillingness to see the reality. We are all the environment, because we are all of the same essence/spirit/energy. There is no separate "I". Only a form that has taken shape and consciousness temporarily.

  The illusion of separateness is what blinds us and allows us to harm the environment, kill or be killed for our favorite story of our favorite God, our favorite political ideology, or for some land, diamonds, or oil sands. Of what benefit will any of those things be when we are compost? The value of those things is all delusion.

  Cog
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  quietlyleaving

  Here is a quote from Eckhart Tolle

  There are situations where all answers and explanations fail. Life does not make sense anymore. Or someone in distress comes to you for help, and you don't know what to do or say. when you fully accept that you don't know, you give up struggling to find answers with the limited thinking mind, and that is when a greater intelligence can operate through you. And even thought can benefit from that, since the greater intelligence can flow into it and inspire it. Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and becoming comfortable with not knowing.

  What would be the problem with seeing the greater intelligence mentioned above as one's own subconscious and it itself ias informed by life's experiences but unconsciously?

  I'm asking this because chrisitan religions would describe the greater intelligence as the Holy Spirit. Others would describe it as a collective mind and others as consciousness itself.

  My problem is that if we see the intelligence (already processed) as coming from outside of ourselves then we are setting ourselves up to be used and exploited by others. just wondering
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  poppers

  From journey-on: "But I continue to be baffled as to how one peels away the layers of the onion to get to core of one's true self."
  
  Another way to consider this aside from JamesThomas' excellent response is this: What you are in your true essence never changes, it always "is"; it never changes in any way because it has nothing measurable within manifestation - it transcends manifestation. Now, everything around you and within your body and mind (the field of manifestation) is in constant flux, constant change - so, can you BE that which is always changing? Isn't there a sense, an intuitive "knowing" that you simply "are"? Isn't the real you always here despite what goes on around you AND within the body/mind? In thinking back to when you were little, has this sense of your true identity ever wavered? When you look in the mirror you can see lots of differences, but isn't what is looking out your eyes as pristine as ever? Isn't this sense of "am-ness" still here in its purity? So now I ask, "What is that sense of 'am-ness' that OBSERVES those changes?" Isn't it consciousness? That sense that you simply "are" is the sense of conciousneess and THAT'S what You ARE.
  
  Now, don't just take this idea and identify with it - "I am consciousness" then becomes another idea, another story that is identifed with. Instead, see the truth of it in your own life. The recognition of what consciousness is clarifies as ideas of what you are drop by the wayside. In other words, the seeking for true identity covers it because it is already here - it is what observes the seeking, but what happens is that people get caught up in a search and miss the consciousness. With observation you will notice how the mind seeks to add on to itself, to look for answers to give the ego a sense of completion, or to find the "core of one's true self", as you put it. But what notices the mind searching for those answers is consciousness. When there is the recognition of all that you are not, in keeping with JT's suggestion, and those things drop away from consideration you draw closer to the CONSCIOUS experience of what you really are - the observing consciousness. With nothing left to consider, what is left is consciousness itself shining without obstruction.
  
  The "core of one's true self" is always here in its complete fullness, in complete and utter purity, silently and unconditionally observing everything. It is a matter of consciously becoming aware of that essence by seeing through the "idea of me" and its tendency to seek answers outside of itself. You ARE what is sought. Stop everything and discover this. Just stop and there it is.
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  poppers

  From quietlyleaving: "My problem is that if we see the intelligence (already processed) as coming from outside of ourselves then we are setting ourselves up to be used and exploited by others. just wondering"
  
  What makes you think this intelligence comes from outside yourself? Why accept just another idea that assumes this to be the case? Instead, lay aside all assumptions, lay aside all ideas, and just observe what is actually happening. What ET is pointing to is that this "intelligence" is a function of what you actually are, the underlying consciousness. Is consciousness separate from what you are? It is important to see this for yourself, otherwise you will set yourself up to become trapped in thinking again, trapped in stories rather than resting consciously in your true essence.
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  purplesofa

  I suggest reading: The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle. If you have already, it may be time to read it again. I read the damn thing seven or eight times...but then I'm a fool.

  The second time I read this book, it took on a whole new different meaning. I progessed and matured since the first read and identified with it alot better the 2nd.

  I may be a fool as well, but reading it many times can only help you to understand yourself better and come to a completeness not found in earlier readings.

  purps
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  nvrgnbk

  What James Thomas and poppers have always shared with me is that:

  The "core of one's true self" is always here in its complete fullness, in complete and utter purity, silently and unconditionally observing everything. It is a matter of consciously becoming aware of that essence by seeing through the "idea of me" and its tendency to seek answers outside of itself. You ARE what is sought. Stop everything and discover this. Just stop and there it is.

  The funny thing is, I knew this all along.

  But we need others at times, to help us see through all the "boxes" and "noise".

  That is the very reason that Tolle is not held up as having "the" answer: he offers none.

  He simply offers a way to make one's awareness more acute.

  As poppers stated above, you ARE what is sought. You can't find that in a book.

  And James Thomas:

  Let go of everything everyone (including me) has ever told you about true being. Forget the onion. Forget spirit. Just sit and nonjudgmentally investigate inwards and try to find what you really are. This may mainly require seeing what you are not. For example run through a mental list of everything you believe yourself to be. Is what is closer than the list, that which is seeing the list, contained in anyway within the list? Look some more. You're simple looking for what is real and authentic...right here, right now.

  Thanks.
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  Narkissos

  Now who/what is observing "that which observes everything" and comes back to tell about it within the constraints of language -- if not a separate, dualistic, language-based mind?

  And by calling "It" "Con-sciousness" hasn't this mind sneakingly ascribed "It" its own complex co-gnitive structure, only reversing it as a mirror image (which in this case may imply the denial of complexity, otherness, separateness, antagonism)? If slightly more subtle, is this process, in depth, any less "anthropomorphic" than the old mythmaking by which man made deities after his own image (however equally denying what he disliked in it, i.e. finitude, weakness, transience and mortality) in order to construe himself as the image of a somehow better Other?

  It seems that the religious "choice" (which is not even really a choice) has always been between identifying with the "Other" ("eating your god up," as Edmond Jabès puts it in his description of mysticism) or acknowledging its (and thereby our)provisional yet irreducible difference.
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  poppers

  No one sees, there is seeing; no one tastes, there is tasting, no one hears, there is hearing, no one observes, there is observing. Ego/mind claims these things for its own, thus creating a personalized identity. It co-opts these things from the underlying impersonal consciousness and then becomes lost to what's actually happening.
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  JamesThomas

  Poppers, your guidance is so clear, warm and graceful as to bring tears to my eyes.

  j