Jetsun

The majority of people killed and hurt in this are likely to be children, and ISIS are publicly calling the victims "Crusaders". I know there have been plenty of terrorist incidents recently but this is a new low for me, I can almost understand extremists attacking political figures and hitting places of significance, but to bomb a bunch of children going to a concert.... that is a different level of psychopathy 

I have done it at plenty of Sacred sites around the UK. If you are doing a tour I would recommend Avebury Stone Circle, which unlike Stonehenge is free, you can  also walk around it without restriction. Also Glastonbury Tor plus its red and white springs. For some the energy of Glastonbury is quite strong and attracts a lot of weirdness. All of which is in the same part of the South of UK. 

Yes he says you can use a shower if that is all is available. I am on the water sessions at the moment myself, i think the bath aspect may help you go deeper but i think a more important aspect is your commitment and willingness to feel on the level of body sensation.

Also Michael Brown recommends doing the process three times, so it might be possible in a future round to use a bath.

I forgot but as I was going through TPP I was also reading the book Insight Dialogue.

 

I will post the instructions and I think for those who have gone through TPP, they will be able to see how to implement it with Insight Dialogue during a conversation.

This might be good stuff, but i wouldn't try do it during the Presence Process.

Isnt inquiry a form of meditation?

 

I was assuming from his post that the op was talking about sitting meditation, i hope he can correct us if this is an incorrect assumption

There is no validity to the statement that Karma Yoga is the fastest path (to... liberation, im guessing). It is a method of expedience, no more potent than Jnana and Bhakti.

I guess it's going to be unique to the individual, I am just relaying what i have heard repeated by many of those considered as divine messengers through the ages. Karma yoga isn't​ the way that I have approached it myself, but I've been told it's great

I believe only non-contemplative traditions will put aside meditation as a vital prerequisite.

 

Having said that, i can't think of any authentic non-contemplative spiritual tradition.

There are plenty of individuals who have done it without meditation, Ramana Maharishi for example, Nisargadatta also, the path of enquiry. There are plenty of Spiritual teachers who say the fastest path is Karma Yoga and not meditation, that is usually what the Avatars consistently say through the ages.

If these issues are caused by meditation then don't meditate. Meditation isn't a prerequisite for spiritual development, cultivation or enlightened.

Essays from both camps on the differences between and the value of traditional Advaita versus Neo-Advaita/the Western Satsang movement: http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/trad_neo/trad_neo.htm

Some good essays here, thanks. I quite like Tony Parsons "The Divine Misconception:

"It has recently been argued that Traditional Oneness is somehow better than Neo-Oneness, or even Pseudo-Oneness. The strangeness of this idea exposes the foolishness of trying to give title to that which is limitless.

The cunning and manipulative guru mind inevitably objectifies verbal expression, and out of that objectifying arises a plethora of dogmatic movements all claiming supreme understanding of that which cannot be understood.

As a consequence, so-called Traditional Advaita, for instance, is just another established religion with a proliferation of teachings and literature, all of which very successfully and consistently miss the mark. It stands alongside Christianity and Buddhism as one of the many systems of personal indoctrination promising the eventual spiritual fulfilment. To quote from The Open Secret “To translate the inexpressible into the doctrinal is to attempt to transform a song of freedom into a dogma of limitation. When the bird has flown, the essence of its song is often mislaid and all we are left with is an empty cage.”

It all depends on where they are speaking from.

I should also say it also depends on where they are pointing towards in their words.

The words and what someone says in Satsang is just the surface and isn't the important part. If you go see anyone give a talk whoever it is they will resonate with you in some way, for example if you go see Adolf Hitler give Satsang the parts within you which are in rage and fear are likely to be stirred up, whereas if you go see someone who is an intellectual and all their energy is in their head it is likely to bring you up into your own intellect. But what happens when the person giving Satsang is speaking from and to the deepest part of their/your being it is completely different and isn't the same as just a regular person from the street saying the same words. Where the person speaks from will evoke the same place within you, if the one giving Satsang is speaking from eternal being is will evoke that in you. They even have a concept of this principle in science now with "mirror neurons".

I have been to plenty of Western Satsang's including seeing Rupert Spira who I assume Aetherous is talking about, the majority of them I have got more out of than just mental knowledge. Adyashanti is someone who I consider as a Western master of them, he was trained in it since his early twenties to be able to speak spontaneously from being, in almost every sentence he speaks in Satsang he is pointing you back to somewhere, the words are a means to point there rather than fill up the brain with more knowledge. He has helped evoke awakening to many people this way with Satsangs, probably hundreds. 

It all depends on where they are speaking from.

Although the first edition of the book contains the fundamental intention and method, Michael Brown changed a lot of things for the second (2010) edition. For example nearly all of the presence activating statements have changed wording and there is a big reduction in the required water sessions. The changes were made after his experiences with the process being public so I would go with the improved version .

I guess it is possible that the process could bring on panic attacks by connecting someone with their already existing fear, so it wouldn't create the panic as such rather bring out what is already within someone, but if you were to keep on going the process would also help to bring to resolution the panic by helping to move you through the experience rather than it always being there just under the surface.

Its silly to say it is dangerous though, it is just breathing for two 15 minutes sessions a day, nothing is forced. 

I am on week 7 at the moment, only a few weeks left..  probably shouldn't say too much at the moment but can comment more in a few weeks. My main tips for it though are:

- Only do it using the second version of the book, it varies a lot from the first edition

- Do it exactly as Michael Brown says to do it, don't add anything, don't do loads of other practices at the same time

- Keep going

Awakening is usually termed in the context of dreaming, so at night you may dream you are this or that person having a variety of experiences, but then you wake up and in a few seconds you realise that it wasn't real and was a mental creation.

Spiritual awakening is very similar in that you realise the person you thought you were is also a mental creation, so just as the person you create in the dream never wakes up you as a separate individual will also never wake up, rather you wake up from that to the realisation that you aren't that. Something else wakes up through you. So even if enlightenment happens it won't happen to you.

But just because you have woken up from being a human it doesn't mean no suffering, what is left of the psyche can react in a multitude of ways including fear and terror. For example Suzanne Seagal wrote about her experiences in her book "Collision With the Infinite" and she clearly had an awakening but spent most of the rest of her life in confusion and fear. I personally did a retreat last year where one Finnish woman woke up and spent the two weeks crying and was as white as a sheet the entire time.

There may be no suffering from the perspective of awake space but that doesn't mean that your entirety and all the different areas of your psyche shares this perspective.

There may be no past or future from the perspective of awake space but all your survival conditioning passed down both genetically and karmically over hundreds of years/lifetimes isn't going to give up its grip so easily.

Maybe they realise how shit of a state the world is in and want to speed up the karmic evolution of it

Awakening can be viewed as a first step - but it is a big step and the end of suffering.

 

That used to be considered a pretty big step.

 

The residuals left over from what I would term a real Awakening - not an Awakening Experience - are actually few in number and beliefs in general have dropped off like dead flyies.

 

I have not heard of Awakening happening "slowly" - I have only heard of Oneness taking place over time and people mistaking Oneness for Awakening.

I have heard of awakening happening slowly or at least very subtly. For example Marlies Cocheret speaks about it in her interview on Batgap, there were no massive dramatic shifts rather one day she and her friends realised that her mind was no longer re-creating the separate ego in the same way. Adyashanti has talked about this quite often and he observed that those who have the big dramatic shifts are either seeking really hard before it happens or they just have that kind of dramatic personality, for many others it can just be a gradual and natural shift.

But regarding Byron Katie she calls her initial shift awakening herself, and seems to bear all the hallmarks of awakening when compared to others with similar experiences. I guess it comes back to how you define awakening, one of my teachers defines it as the falling away of the sense of "I" in the heart, which is similar to how Ramana describes the original "I thought" being held in the heart, but just because the sense of I in the heart has dropped away it doesn't mean it has dropped away from every area and every realm of your being.

I personally know awake people who are still finding pockets of I and areas of consciousness still held in separation 10 years after their awakening, which is the embodiment process people talk about these days. From my own perception i think people wake up in varying depth and breadth and then the deepening and widening is a lifetimes work.

I have a favourite top 2 that I can find little fault in, both recent and well documented - Saint Seraphim of Sarov and Ramana Maharshi, I would genuinely like to see your critique of their residual preferences and habits.

It took Ramana 3 years after awakening to enter back into society, to integrate and process what was happening to him where he lived alone in a cave. It could well be that he was dealing with his residual preferences and habits during this period.

I believe 'absolute' Self-realisation is possible no matter how rare, and to deny that it is possible is to manipulate the bar lower so as to believe that the attainment one has managed is enough.

 

So though I deny somewhat the value of 'awakening', which is patently an unfinished state, I have great respect for true Self-realisation from which there is no falling back.

 

I don't deny it's possible, but I don't see much evidence of it in the lives of most regular folk. The flip side of it is setting the bar so high that you write off all that is in between as insignificant.

But the way I see awakening is that it is more like the first step towards enlightenment rather than the last step. Before that we are mostly just pinging about in our minds. After awakening the ability to repress and control our experience is greatly reduced so all that is within us which we have denied and kept down starts to come up , so old habits and issues can even get worse for a time.

But take for example someone like Byron Katie, she developed her work method after she woke up as a means to deal with all the beliefs and blocks which were there after awakening, not before. She didn't wake up all at once in entirety, rather the core sense of separation fell away but there were still all sorts of beliefs and pockets of "I" still left over. She said it took her over two years after awakening just to process all the beliefs she had around her mother. She was still awake even though she had all these blocks and issues still inside of her at that time which would temporarily take her out of the awareness of being awake.

Either that, or they were always that ship floating in the water (not the water itself), waiting for that next iceberg to come along. But, such a view is for everyone to decide on their own...

 

Being the water itself is a lot like being the valley of the universe (TTC - Chapter 28).

Well everyone is already the water itself, they just don't realise it. Even those that realise it the majority of the time can temporarily get caught in the dream that they are something else. I don't see any examples in the real world of anyone who never gets caught in conditioning and separation from time to time, it seems to be the human condition, to fall again and again. From my perspective those people who say they are 100% realised 24/7 are basically hiding out in the transcendent realm as a means of avoiding the difficult realm of their humanity.

Everyone gets caught up in conditioning no matter how awake they are. In that moment of being caught they are not awake because part of their being which see's itself as separate has taken over, so if someone asked them in that moment if they are awake the only true answer is no, but a few moments later when that part has lost dominance and the same question is asked then the honest answer is yes. 

The main principles before and after awakening aren't really any different. Whatever you resist grows, so trying to get rid of the habit just feeds into conflict and control consciousness rather than free awake consciousness. And whatever you put your attention on/invest in grows, so put your attention on awake space rather than conflict and struggle and it burns everything up, which takes a kind of faith to trust that rather than actively try and do something about it.

I like the definitions that awakening is used to describe the Initial identity shift....waking up from being a Person to the source of all.

this awakening can be abiding or non abiding.

If it is abiding and there is openness than further shifts happen and deep Clearing/de-conditioning and transformations happen. first within consciouness (pure being) and then beyond it.

Enlightenment would be (for me) a very far away Point where one has gone through several indentiy shifts and deep embodiment of them.

This is pretty much the way I see it. I have been to many meetings and teachings of various people who are described as "awake" who have written books on the subject and lead retreats etc and there is a similarity between them all which is different to the average person I meet or work with on a daily basis, in that they have this kind of non striving kind of background peace or stillness which is conveyed from their being and energy. Its like they don't have a centre with which to compare or compete with others, by awakening to the totality comparing and competing no longer makes sense.

Even though they have this shared presence each varies in their abidance in it and in the breadth and depth to which this stillness runs their operating system. So all of them have varying degrees of conditioning left in their system which sometimes takes over, therefore i wouldn't describe any of them as enlightened even though they have awoken to the fundamental space of what enlightenment is, their entire being is yet to be colonised by this space. Which is why you can get teachers who are awake and have real depth in their realisation but still have scandals because not all of them are awake, even if their fundamental centre of separate "I" is gone there are still pockets of "I" not yet liberated.

The only person I have found who appears to operate from this space all the time 24/7 is Ammachi , although she might be in her own category, but she is about the only person I have met or seen who i could satisfactorily say is enlightened. Everyone else is a work in progress.

why no interest in this topic?

Post in general discussion and you will probably get more posts, many people like me don't read this section much

Oh Lord please save us from the Brexiters , somehow they forget what happened in the 1970's when Britain was "the sick man of Europe", when we couldn't pay our debts or even empty our bins. To our rescue came our entry into the world's largest single market, which has led us to being one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Now we turn our back on our saviour and enter the unknown, it could well be a return to the 1970s, nobody really knows what will happen - especially those who have led us here, who literally have no plan or clue what to do next

I'm sure there wasn't any legal pressure or financial reason he might do this, must be from the bottom of his heart