Many people arrive with an obsession, myself included, and if left unchecked, the board would diffuse into an unstructured mass of tangents

Ted has the unpaid job of constraining board discussions to maintain some semblance of order, and has Tom's full trust to do this as he chooses. This has been made explicit by Tom.

The essential element here is not your idea and proposal, but rather your capacity to submit to authority and structure.

The quality of your idea or the quality of Ted's intent or decisions, is not relevant.

Can you accept the authority of Tom's chosen administrator, or not? There is a simple rule here....to state it plainly, don't irritate Ted.

Part of entropy reduction is the capacity to freely give this gift of surrendering decision space to another, for a productive purpose

If entropy is not sufficiently reduced, ego dominates any frontal cortex or left hemispheric analysis, and the interaction takes place on the level of primal head butting. Are you above or below this tipping point?

My current theory on this is that some of Ted's interactions with newcomers is actually an ego probe, which some occasionally fail. If you cannot accept Ted's rather undemanding constraints, and if your bolshiness rises to the level of getting into a tussel with him, you are very likely to be disruptive with persons who are less disciplined than Ted in their interactions, which would be disruptive for the board.

Perhaps I am wrong in this. I look forward to observing your next intent->decision->action->result->feedback

_________________
Does this PMR make my butt look big?

Hicquodiam,

One step of many is not enough to think about one's personal growth. Growth is a process, and it goes through years, up and down, realization after realization, and the most important one, that more one learns, it becomes more clear, that one knows nothing.

This is perfectly OK to share your steps and successes here. Many people have done it here. What seems one's personal revelation at a given moment, later could be seen as a small and insignificant pinhead, and further one walks on one's path, it becomes obvious, that others have been aware of this revelation for a long time before him. As soon as one reaches a plato and enjoys a view from it, one has to start climbing up again. Otherwise one's growth turns into stagnation.

Lena

_________________
'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

Trigger what?
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

It is simple, and it only explains one thing. That doesn't mean it's not good, however.



How am I heading into a belief trap?

Yes, I concretely believe no-self is true. I'd give it up in an instant though if I saw something which falsified it, that's how science works.

I believe it's true not because it helped me, or because I like the idea, or because a person I respect talked about it. No, I believe it's true because I saw real-life, empirical evidence which falsified my assumption in a "me".

I don't know what this would be a shortcut to? Liberation from living life in service to a self-image?

It's short though - wouldn't take more than a day of looking into it (I've seen some do it in minutes, seconds) to see if it's true or BS. How could someone know it's a belief-trap if they haven't done that?

_________________
Freedom is seeing that there's no you:
undisguisedlife.blogspot.com

How?
by believing and advertizing that you found something fundamental and understand it, too?
You'll work it out eventually, that belief-trap thing ...

I don't want to falsify anything, there isn't much of a theory to falsify anyway.
And I don't want to argue.

As I said: been there, done that - sloppily put.
But where you found your answer I found questions, which have since lead me on.

I wish you all the best!

Ya definitely, I still suffer (well, suffering still happens). It's definitely eased though, doesn't feed back into the self-image and amplify.



Obviously, I'm not saying there's no existence whatsoever. Of course there is, the experience of these words are real, memories (as thoughts) are real, lots of stuff's real.

It's just not MY existence though - it's existence on its own, experience on its own, there's no owner of it. There's no division between it and something which experiences/lives it. In other words, in the context of PMR human reality there's just life/existence, happening to no one.

Literally.



I've only read the second link. It's shit - same stuff Eckart Tolle tells people to do as well. None of them wake up.

The problem with it is that there's no witness to phenomena - that's the false division that everyone thinks they are anyway. Whether you identify as a noisy witness or a silent one doesn't make a difference; experience doesn't actually happen to a witness, it happens in a void. Space. Nothing.

Test me on this.

_________________
Freedom is seeing that there's no you:
undisguisedlife.blogspot.com

Who's responsible for that state of affairs, Tolle or 'people' ?

Disclosure: I know very, very little about Tolle.

This is a hallmark statement of a scientific materialist viewpoint.

@Hicquodiam

on your remark about E. Tolle
I personally know people (well ... one, maybe two) who did "wake up" from this.
It depends on where you are, what your current viewpoint is, whether he will have to tell you something.
For me, he came too late, so to speak. I kinda was already there or past it when I got aware of him, thats how I'd describe it.
Different people, different ways.

It's definitely not "shit" - as you so eloquently put it.
You judgeing it so easily and completely and in a handwaving negative way is not encouraging the notion that you, too, have woken up much.

... still and especially now:
all the best!

addition:
a void? - hmm ...
space? - no
nothing? - no
No Thing? - that's closer

Hicquodiam-

You are wasting your time in pomposity and hard headedness. I keep telling you your insight only scratches the surface.

You are not free. You are not awakened. You are completely stuck on yourself and you fail to consider other viewpoints.

All you have dissolved was a constructed self-image. Your insight has value but it is not the end all. All it proves is that self is not what you thought it was, and consciousness is much weirder, therefore, than you previously thought. Obviously you still have a self because you continue to have experiences. Pretending otherwise will not save from the potential agonies of life.

Please read the following with an open mind. You demand the same from the forum goers here so I am demanding the same from you.

This is part of a talk by the same guy you said wrote shit. Keep in mind: the term "neo-advaitins" refers to people who think like you do.



Another excellent quote:


The fact is your 'surface consciousness' (what you call nothingness, space, or void) continues whatever your insights have been up to this point. You don't have access to deeper states that really mean something.

To reiterate- Your insight is only skin deep. You need to look into the full consequence of "no-self" by meditating on and into deeper levels of consciousness.

Your insight is trivial unless you use it as a jumping off point to deeper experiences.

I understand your insight completely and yet I do not have the pretense of enlightenment or ultra hard headedness.

Please take the time to consider these thoughts before you respond.

Alright - I'm out.

Before coming to this forum, I was planning to hit up some general self-help forums. Figured I'd swoop in by here quickly because it was Tom's book that taught me open-minded skepticism, which cracked this thing open for me.

I figured you guys would instantly use it on the first post, or at least one of you. That's literally all it would take to permanently free yourself from living as a slave to a fiction.

Instead, none of you did that. Even after reading MBT, with all the chapters and incredible proofs on not only how it's important, but why it's important to look for the reality of every new idea presented to you.

You were all too fine for telling me how wrong I am (belief-defense), or how what I'm saying doesn't fit into Tom's model (belief-defense), or much worse, straight up lying about what I said, like claiming that I said this is the end of suffering so you can attack a point I never made (belief-aggression).

Or, of course, looking up my OKCupid profile (send me a message on there Ted, I'd like to see yours ;))

That stuff would have been fine, if

1. It was true
and
2. You came to that conclusion only after first considering that I actually have a point, looking into what that is, seeing the extent of it (not fully, but even slightly), and THEN seeing its weak-points from inside it.

I know you guys didn't do that, because if you did, you would have seen how and why this instantly triggers the freedom to live a life unbounded by the self-image. Because that's what it actually does. Not because I say it does, but because that's how it actually works - reality doesn't care what I say about it, but it does work in very specific ways.

Anyway, I could stick in for a few more weeks and maybe get one or two of you to look, or I can find a more effective way of communicating this to more honest people. I'll try the latter. Hope I'm not lying to myself to escape the tediousness of staying here, but I guess I'll find out soon enough.

Anyway, if one of you sees any value in what I'm saying, or honestly feels you're not liberated from your self-image (I know some of you are, Tom definitely is, Advaita might be) hit me up at undisguisedlife@gmail.com.

I'll work with you, for free, until you've triggered that freedom in yourself.

Anyway, see ya

-Hicquodiam

_________________
Freedom is seeing that there's no you:
undisguisedlife.blogspot.com

As the fox said, the grapes were probably sour anyway.

Ted

your whole attitude is one of self absorption and attachment to role as teacher/instructor, and the need to control. which communicates a sense of spiritual poverty, not spiritual wealth, which does not help sell your product, even if it the great answer

the great answer of TOEism, the spiritual consciousness enhancing ecology implied by MBTOE, is to draw attention to the intent decision tree that we are each passing through moment to moment, and to explain other tangentials such as PSI

and progress is measured in hundreds of lifetimes, thousands of years - there is no free lunch, such as a single insight and waking up

the core subliminal marker of an authentic teacher is emotional detachment from the result of your intent, at least to the extent that one does not throw a hissy fit if the target is non-responsive or not interested or confused

when you are spiritually and emotionally wealthy, there is no frustration when your target is non-responsive...or there could be a different quality of frustration regarding empathy and disappointment, but this is a different expression than

"you guys are morons for not listening to me!"

the correct response in your mind is rather...."not ready yet" and transmit empathetic tone and action to set a hook/seed at the subliminal level

we will be here in 5 or 10 years when you are ready to come back and interact like a normal person

_________________
Does this PMR make my butt look big?

Never heard that one before. It's a good one. So true.

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I eat ego's for breakfast!
Sincerely, Ego.

Lumpy, have you ever heard of Aesops Fables ? Short of looking it up, I mean ?