The Brilliant Clarity of Ever-Present Awareness

[zengrifter]

Always Already
The Brilliant Clarity of Ever-Present Awareness

Ken Wilber | Integral Options Cafe



Where are we to locate Spirit? What are we actually allowed to acknowledge
as Sacred? Where exactly is the Ground of Being? Where is this ultimate Divine?

The Great Search

The Realization of the Nondual traditions is uncompromising: there is only Spirit, there is only God, there is only Emptiness in all its radiant wonder. All the good and all the evil, the very best and the very worst, the upright and the degenerate-each and all are radically perfect manifestations of Spirit precisely as they are. There is nothing but God, nothing but the Goddess, nothing but Spirit in all directions, and not a grain of sand, not a speck of dust, is more or less Spirit than any other.

This realization undoes the Great Search that is the heart of the separate-self sense. The separate-self is, at bottom, simply a sensation of seeking. When you feel yourself right now, you will basically feel a tiny interior tension or contraction—a sensation of grasping, desiring, wishing, wanting, avoiding, resisting-it is a sensation of effort, a sensation of seeking.

In its highest form, this sensation of seeking takes on the form of the Great Search for Spirit. We wish to get from our unenlightened state (of sin or delusion or duality) to an enlightened or more spiritual state. We wish to get from where Spirit is not, to where Spirit is.

But there is no place where Spirit is not. Every single location in the entire Kosmos is equally and fully Spirit. Seeking of any sort, movement of any sort, attainment of any sort: all profoundly useless. The Great Search simply reinforces the mistaken assumption that there is some' place that Spirit is not, and that I need to get from a space that is lacking to a space that is full. But there is no space lacking, and there is no space more full. There is only Spirit.

MORE- http://integral-options.blogspot.com...brilliant.html

[Katweezel]

Wilber =

[Pelerus]

Happiness is an illusion; only suffering is real.
(Voltaire)

[Katweezel]

Originally Posted by Pelerus

Happiness is an illusion; only suffering is real.
(Voltaire)

Illusion is the first of all pleasures. ~Voltaire
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. ~Albert Einstein

Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling? ~M.C. Escher


There are no facts, only interpretations. ~Friedrich Nietzsche


What is reality anyway! It's nothing but a collective hunch. ~Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, 1985, performed by Lily Tomlin


What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn't everyone look at himself in his own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist. ~Pablo Picasso

What was once called the objective world is a sort of Rorschach ink blot, into which each culture, each system of science and religion, each type of personality, reads a meaning only remotely derived from the shape and color of the blot itself. ~Lewis Mumford, "Orientation to Life," The Conduct of Life, 1951

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion. ~Democritus

Reality is not always probable, or likely. ~Jorge Luis Borges

Listening to both sides of a story will convince you that there is more to a story than both sides. ~Frank Tyger

I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything. ~John Steinbeck

The formula "two and two make five" is not without its attractions. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground, 1864

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check. ~M.C. Escher

There's something beautifully soothing about a fact - even (or perhaps especially) if we're not sure what it means. ~Daniel J. Boorstin

Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there. ~E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 1960

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality. ~Jules de Gaultier

[aslan]

Originally Posted by Pelerus

Happiness is an illusion; only suffering is real.
(Voltaire)

Consider the possibility of happiness in the midst of suffering. For example, parents who works their fingers to the bone to provide a better life for their children.

[Pelerus]

Originally Posted by aslan

Consider the possibility of happiness in the midst of suffering. For example, parents who works their fingers to the bone to provide a better life for their children.

With his saying, I consider Voltaire to have meant that suffering is the fundamental reality of existence, while happiness occurs only as brief moments of forgetfulness of that reality. Suffering is the ground of all sentient life: in suffering we are born; through suffering we struggle to exist; in suffering we die.

In the final analysis, and to put it bluntly, what in the world does anyone have anything to be happy about, exactly? Happiness - in the sense of being happy to have made an achievement, to have found love, to have won money - simply cannot stand up to objective analysis. Ultimately, none of these objects of desire have even a single effect upon the basic realities of existence: death at any moment or a lifetime of illness, mental tortures, the anguish of losing everything and anything one holds dear, and in the end - as perhaps the most merciful element of life - one's total annihilation.

And as the tragic animal, it is also man's fate to understand this. Thus as soon as one object of his desiring is achieved, another quickly fills its place after only a brief moment of satisfaction. It is this destiny of eternal seeking without satisfaction that has led the wisest sages to the same conclusion: Life is a sickness.

Life, both as a whole and in its component pieces, has all the characteristics of a sickness: the initial onset of symptoms (Something catches one's fancy); the progression of the illness (He struggles to acquire or achieve it); the brief period of recovery (He finally achieves the object of desire); and the immediate re-onset of the condition (He becomes bored with his achievement and moves on to the next object of desiring).

In this cycle of illness, happiness exists only as the briefest and most fleeting stage (to make use of a blackjack analogy, it is the two percent of the time when one finds oneself at new bankroll high).

The enlightened man, having recognized this cycle and his place within it, is naturally concerned with a way of escape. To that end, he has created religions and philosophies of various sorts which preach the methods by which one can attain some degree of liberation from the cycle of illness. But ultimately, when it comes to the riddle in which life itself is the problem, there can be only one true solution - and that is death.

[zengrifter]

Originally Posted by aslan

Consider the possibility of happiness in the midst of suffering. For example, parents who works their fingers to the bone to provide a better life for their children.

ILLUSION! zg

[zengrifter]

Originally Posted by Pelerus

With his saying, I consider Voltaire to have meant that suffering is the fundamental reality of existence, while happiness occurs only as brief moments of forgetfulness of that reality. Suffering is the ground of all sentient life: in suffering we are born; through suffering we struggle to exist; in suffering we die.

The Buddha adds: "Suffering exits, but NONE who suffer." Thus underscoring the illusionary nature of our personas. zg

[Katweezel]

Originally Posted by Pelerus

With his saying, I consider Voltaire to have meant that suffering is the fundamental reality of existence, while happiness occurs only as brief moments of forgetfulness of that reality. Suffering is the ground of all sentient life: in suffering we are born; through suffering we struggle to exist; in suffering we die.

In the final analysis, and to put it bluntly, what in the world does anyone have anything to be happy about, exactly? Happiness - in the sense of being happy to have made an achievement, to have found love, to have won money - simply cannot stand up to objective analysis. Ultimately, none of these objects of desire have even a single effect upon the basic realities of existence: death at any moment or a lifetime of illness, mental tortures, the anguish of losing everything and anything one holds dear, and in the end - as perhaps the most merciful element of life - one's total annihilation.

And as the tragic animal, it is also man's fate to understand this. Thus as soon as one object of his desiring is achieved, another quickly fills its place after only a brief moment of satisfaction. It is this destiny of eternal seeking without satisfaction that has led the wisest sages to the same conclusion: Life is a sickness.

Life, both as a whole and in its component pieces, has all the characteristics of a sickness: the initial onset of symptoms (Something catches one's fancy); the progression of the illness (He struggles to acquire or achieve it); the brief period of recovery (He finally achieves the object of desire); and the immediate re-onset of the condition (He becomes bored with his achievement and moves on to the next object of desiring).

In this cycle of illness, happiness exists only as the briefest and most fleeting stage (to make use of a blackjack analogy, it is the two percent of the time when one finds oneself at new bankroll high).

The enlightened man, having recognized this cycle and his place within it, is naturally concerned with a way of escape. To that end, he has created religions and philosophies of various sorts which preach the methods by which one can attain some degree of liberation from the cycle of illness. But ultimately, when it comes to the riddle in which life itself is the problem, there can be only one true solution - and that is death.

I believe this post illustrates the eternal religion of too much conscious-mind thinking and too many negative news bulletins. These promote hopelessness concerning life in general and human life in particular. Ken Wilber's article on this thread once again sheds light on the eternal enigma of the meaning of life for the 'enlightened man'. His message is the same one that Eastern mystics and Gurus have been delivering for more than 6000 years. But the Western mind, for the most part cannot read, hear or understand it... Below is some brief, illusory happiness. Enjoy it quick, before it disappears and dismal reality quickly resumes its inevitable march toward inescapable annihilation.

[zengrifter]

Originally Posted by Katweezel

I believe this post illustrates the eternal religion of too much conscious-mind thinking and too many negative news bulletins. These promote hopelessness concerning life in general and human life in particular. Ken Wilber's article on this thread once again sheds light on the eternal enigma of the meaning of life for the 'enlightened man'. His message is the same one that Eastern mystics and Gurus have been delivering for more than 6000 years. But the Western mind, for the most part cannot read, hear or understand it... Below is some brief, illusory happiness. Enjoy it quick, before it disappears and dismal reality quickly resumes its inevitable march toward inescapable annihilation.

And remember -

"Don't worry, NOTHING is under control!" -- Adi Da