--- In [email protected], a_non_moose_ff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "Alex Stanley" > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Is it your belief that an enlightened person no longer has > > an ego or conditioned mind? [snip] > And I assume, corrections welcome, that the premise of your > question stems from the view of Waking Down that there is an > ego (and conditioned mind) in enlightnement.
I suppose it's time for me to come out of the closet and fess up to having recently emerged from the Dark Night of the Soul as another FFL SCA. My conditioned state has not changed; I still have the same wiring, the same likes and dislikes, attractions, etc. What's different, however, is with who/what I identify. I'm not a mood-maker; I tell it like I see it. And, on 1 Nov. 2005, I wrote to Sandra Glickman: "On Saturday you asked me something along the lines of, "Who is aware of being irritated?" The answer is that my I-ness experienced itself as being in the condition of being irritated. For me, it's all me/I/self all the way down." That is no longer the case. I emerged from the dark night with this sorta neti neti thang going on and the realization that I am NOT this John Alexander Stanleyness. I am NOT my body. I am NOT my conditioning. I am NOT my thoughts, beliefs, opinions, etc. If I ask myself, "Who am I?", there is only silence and awareness; there is nothing I can say (which is why it took me a while to grasp the awakening; I was hung up on the concept that there would be an affirmative "I AM THAT", so I spent a couple weeks in a state of doubt). The internal experience now is a very quiet, child-like innocence. There's profound joy and freedom in it, yet it is utterly mundane. And, while the conditioned state has not changed, it simply doesn't matter. I laughed while reading Vaj's recent post about obliterating vasanas, because I figure that as long as my vasanas are not compelling me to eat human liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti, who the fuck cares? Perhaps, at some point, I'll decide to do some exploration and/or modification on the level of my subtle relative existence, but not right now. After so many decades of Scotty down in engineering diverting all available power to the grasper beam and aversion engines, I am content to just be. [snip] > And Tom T, who claims enlightenment, says there are milions of > diferent types of enlightenemnt, or flavors as he calls them. It makes perfect sense to me that awareness aware of itself, as expressed through myriad mind/body organisms, will show up in myriad different ways. If the field of all possibilities could only express itself as those possibilities that don't contradict each other, it wouldn't be a field of ALL possibilities. > So hopefully you share some the the difficulty I have with the > use of the label "enlightenment". And also the phenomenon of > self-proclamation of self-defined enlightenment. The only difficulty I have with the label "enlightenment" is the notion that it has to be rigidly defined. But, I have no issue with someone proclaiming that he no longer identifies with story and illusion. Alex ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Join modern day disciples reach the disfigured and poor with hope and healing http://us.click.yahoo.com/lMct6A/Vp3LAA/i1hLAA/UlWolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
