What Is Enlightened Awareness? Ask Deepak Chopra!

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Everything that we experience in life is the contents of our awareness. Perceptions, thoughts, emotions are all the content of our awareness. How do we know that we, that other people and the world exist? Because we are aware of their existence. The facts of existence are the contents of our awareness. How do we experience our world? We experience them as thoughts, sensations, feelings, moods, and images in consciousness. All that exists is awareness and the contents of awareness. It is the ground of being in which the contents of awareness arise and subsides. To know this and to feel this is to have a grounding in universal awareness. Our world is only a “qualia gestalt”, a perception in our quality of awareness. To be able to be grounded in that understanding is moving in the direction of an enlightened awareness.

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  1. paleo mountain man Paleo Mountain man

    Sir, we met in Stoneham many years ago. You were my grandmothers physician at the time. You diagnosed her illness by putting your palm on her abdomin. She was 102 when she passed. That stayed with me. Keep talking I enjoy it very much. Thank you. Jimmy

  2. yotam robert

    Thank you ?

  3. Progressive Ideologies

    Sir you are our ultimate guide to wards our ultimate reality. But unfortunately we cannot follow you. Would you please guide us step by step ????

  4. Sanku Balan

    How can I change my belief system?

  5. Norma Denys

    Thank you

  6. Reverend Eslam

    ? 17. THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SPIRITUAL AWAKENING, LIBERATION, & ENLIGHTENMENT:

    AWAKENING:
    Any person who has experienced a state of cosmic awareness can rightly be called a “buddha” (a Sanskrit/Pali term for “an awakened being”). During such TEMPORAL experiences (that is, they begin at some point in time and then end at a subsequent point in time, even if at the time of death), there is usually a dissolution of the subject-object dichotomy, or at least a radical shift in one’s perception of life. In the most profound awakening experience, the perceiver, the perceived, and the perceiving, unify.

    Awakening means to see clearly that one’s persona is but a character in a dream of The Absolute, and that one is essentially that Flawless Awareness. Therefore, it is not to be taken literally – that the person wakes from the “Cosmic Dream” in the same way that a human wakes from a night dream. It simply implies that the person realizes that he/she is one of the multitude of dream CHARACTERS and that individual free-will was purely an illusion. During such awakenings, one experiences the non-conceptual state, which is somewhat akin to the state of equanimous mind or “steady-mind” (“samādhi”, in Sanskrit). However, samādhi is usually a far longer-term state of being.

    This is a relatively common phenomenon. In fact, there are most probably MILLIONS of persons currently on earth who have experienced some kind of awakening, where they directly perceive themselves to be more than a mere body-mind complex. The experience can be either totally spontaneous, or it can follow many decades of intense spiritual practice. However, there is no direct causal link between religious practices and awakening experiences, despite what most religionists believe.

    It is common for newly-awakened persons to CONFUSE and conflate relative and absolute truth. That is to say, when a neophyte buddha is speaking of relative concepts, they invariably use absolute terms.
    For instance, they may make such statements as: “You don’t exist”; “Nothing ever happened”; “There is no right or wrong”; “Everything and/or everyone is equal”; “I am not my body”; “We are One”; and “I am you, and you are me”. Hopefully, such persons will come to see that there is no need to speak about everything from the Absolute perspective. Verily, it is unbeneficial to the persons with whom they are conversing (unless, of course, those third persons are thoroughly deluded materialists, who are unable to see beyond the physical realm).

    Unfortunately (for spiritual-seekers), there is a multitude of awakened or partially-awakened persons who mistakenly believe that they are somehow enlightened masters, and proceed to embark on a teaching career. The fact is, many (if not most) of these BOGUS “gurus” are afflicted with a narcissistic, demonic mentality, and ought to be exposed and denounced for the fraudsters that they are.

    Awakening to one’s true nature does NOT automatically promote one to being a saint, since one’s unique characteristics, flaws and obsessions may endure. There is an abundance of evidence that awakening experiences can be induced simply by the administration of certain hallucinogenic drugs, so to claim that one is exceptionally remarkable just for being a buddha, is rather conceited.

    LIBERATION:
    “Liberation” means “freedom”. Thus, a liberated soul is a person who has become emancipated from the five kinds of suffering (blame, shame, pride, regrets/expectations, and anxiety), all of which are based on the belief in personal AGENCY. Read Chapter 15 to understand the nature of suffering and Chapter 11 to understand that humans are not independent agents with freedom of will.

    Awakening experiences are not a prerequisite to being liberated from suffering.
    LIKEWISE, not all liberated persons are automatically enlightened (at least not to the degree necessary in order to be labelled as such), but there is a strong correlation between the two states of being.

    A liberated person is scarce, because very few understand the true nature of suffering, and of those who do understand the distinction between psycho-physical pain and ACTUAL psychological suffering, it is difficult to surrender to one’s circumstances, free of obsessive thinking and judging.

    ENLIGHTENMENT:
    Of those who have experienced a state of “oneness” and are free from mental suffering, there are EXTREMELY rare souls who are spiritually-enlightened (at least to such an extent to be worthy of the term). If the term were to be taken literally, a person may be permeated or imbued in light (or “see the light”) to varying degrees, just as the ocean is more illumined by direct sunlight than it is by moonlight.

    Every person who has ever lived can be RANKED according to their level of enlightenment. Even if one understands that there is more to existence than gross matter and localized consciousness, one could claim to be more enlightened than a gross materialist. Therefore, somewhere in the world resides a person who is the most ignorant fool on earth, and at a different location one may find the most enlightened sage extant. Like practically everything in life, enlightenment is relative. Even “full” enlightenment is not an absolute state.

    If one were to approach a rocket scientist, one would expect him to fully understand his field of expertise. He would understand advanced physics and chemistry, and know precisely how to design and launch spacecraft into outer-space.
    Similarly, an enlightened sage is one who understands LIFE. He knows how this phenomenal world came to be, how the law of action and reaction actually works, how to become liberated from temporal sufferings, and should be able to logically answer any question posed to him by a spiritual seeker (what to speak of highly-intelligent members of the scientific and philosophical communities).

    An enlightened person has eschewed all belief systems and relies solely on objective, VERIFIABLE concepts, knowing that even the most accurate concepts are relative, and that the ultimate reality is Absolute.

    A fully-enlightened person is almost invariably a member of the Holy Priesthood (a prophet, to be more precise), and NECESSARILY possesses a genius or near-genius level of intelligence. “Necessarily”, because, as previously stated, he is required to competently respond to even the most difficult questions and conundrums posed to him by others (otherwise, he can hardly claimed to be a fully-enlightened individual). On the other hand, even the village idiot can receive awakening experiences. However, to be liberated from suffering, one normally requires at least an average level of intelligence.

    Needless to say, an enlightened person adheres to a strict code of morals and ethics such as avoidance of pornography, illicit sexual activity, gambling, intoxicants, and animal products.
    To be fair, there are many examples of persons who seem to be very awakened and/or enlightened, yet engage in base pursuits such as those mentioned above, due to their genetic make-up and conditioning. However, this category is devoted to highly-evolved beings who LITERALLY radiate holiness – those who even the vilest of souls can recognize to be elevated far above ordinary, animalistic humanity.

    Those enlightened individuals, who actively support objectively-evil ideologies/practices, such as socialism, communism, democracy, feminism, homosexuality, and carnism, are of no practical benefit to society (quite the OPPOSITE, in fact).

    Out of a billion persons, there may be one or two enlightened masters. These self-realized world-teachers are almost TOTALLY shunned by society, for, as Lord Jesus once proclaimed: “I am the enemy of the world because I am telling the world that it is evil”.

    “You have to let it happen, just like you have to let yourself go to sleep – you can’t try to go to sleep. You have to let yourself digest your food – you can’t try to digest it.
    And so, in the same way, you have to let yourself wake-up (become liberated).”
    *************
    “A flow of water suddenly does a whirlpool and then it goes on. The whirlpool is a definite form but no water stays put in it.
    The whirlpool is something the stream is doing, and in exactly the same way, the universe is doing each one of us.”
    Professor Alan W. Watts,
    British–American Philosopher.

    “Awakening cannot take place, so long as the idea persists, that one is a seeker.
    Doing sadhana (spiritual practices) means, assuming the existence of a phantom.
    The entity that you think you are, is false.
    You ARE the Reality!”
    *************
    “When Realization dawns, then what happens? You are no longer ‘you’. You remain established in the inner silence and freedom, without any concern for your welfare, content with whatever comes along – and life goes on in perfect effortlessness.”
    *************
    ”Only when it is time, in the cosmic scheme of evolution, for a particular psychosomatic apparatus to get enlightened, can enlightenment happen.
    And if that time has come, nothing in this world can prevent it from happening.
    Nor can anything in this world, make enlightenment happen, if it is not time.”
    *************
    “Enlightenment is total emptiness of mind. There is nothing you can do to get it. Any effort you make, can only be an obstruction to it.”
    *************
    “If you but cease from useless conceptualizing, you will be what you are and what you have always been.”
    Ramesh Balsekar,
    Indian Spiritual Teacher.

  7. Bernhard

    Thank you very much for the description of the innermost truth of existence. You have put it into very simple words. Yet, it is not understandable through the intellect.

    It always the most amazing thing to do: To try to dissolve ones being with another being in order to feel the other approach, and to somehow merge into the other trial on this “mission impossible”. Your way of putting it is very blunt, very plain vanilla, a very scientific way of expressing. However, there is nothing more to say. Like when a scientist says E=m*c2, (it was Albert Einstein, wasn’t it?), you said “…you are not the content of your awareness”.
    That’s it, finished, end of the story, nothing less, nothing more.
    It has the same beauty of E=m*c2

    The question that remains is how can we realize that?
    Where is the little pocket calculator in which we can program the formula of enlightenment?
    So anybody standing in front of it, with the sincere wish, will immediately be transformed and able to feel the complete meaning of: “…you are not the content of your awareness”. …,

  8. Suketa Patel

    Thank you for this key? It does broaden the vision….like my eyes that sees the universe and actually IS the universe itself.

  9. Sui Generis

    Please fix the typo in the title for the video. It is distracting and it is hard to take the message seriously.

  10. Reverend Eslam

    Sanku Balan

    “If someone tries to convert you to some other system of belief, it’s pointless. The more someone tries, the more you’ll fight it and irresistible force will meet immovable object and ‘goodbye’ and nothing was gained”.
    Robert “Shunyamurti” Shubow,
    Sat Yoga Institute and Ashram,
    Costa Rica.

  11. Reverend Eslam

    Progressive Ideologies
    The ULTIMATE guide?
    Surely you jest? ?

  12. paleo mountain man Paleo Mountain man

    @Reverend Eslam lots of fruit and nuts, things from trees. This Mountain is my food.

  13. Harsh Mehta

    It is too hard to understand your launguage.if it was in hindi it would help better

  14. Reverend Eslam

    paleo mountain man Paleo Mountain man
    So you’re VEGAN? ?

  15. paleo mountain man Paleo Mountain man

    @Reverend Eslam my cabin is situated on an ancient quartz quarry site. The people who lived here carved the stone into magnificent works of art. Serpent walls run through the place and red ocher mounds containing the remains of a lost race of Giants watch the eastern horizon. Just being here has a benefit to your overall health but the magic is in the water. It comes up from a nine hundred foot deep well through the quartz Mountain.
    This place saw a profound change in my health and an awakening that is still happening. There is hope for this world one person at a time.
    Jimmy

  16. paleo mountain man Paleo Mountain man

    Thank you for putting the time into your explanation. Poetry is the best way of expressing the enlightenment journey.
    sweet fruit
    in bowing low my head I feel a trace, branches dip burdened with heavy fruit, caressed with lines deep pain across my face as if this soul a robber comes to loot. Echos beat deep within this chest as tears of salty blue peel from my eyes, this man has captured all yet left the rest like falling down this sweet, sweet fruit must die.
    new and green the tender shoots will rise, awakening this soul that’s found a trace, the man of withered past begins to die as birth foretells the future on his face, come now discard those rusty things within, bow low your head as life begins again. Jimmy

  17. Reverend Eslam

    paleo mountain man Paleo Mountain man
    I am patiently awaiting your response to my question, SLAVE…

  18. Reverend Eslam

    paleo mountain man Paleo Mountain man
    To read the remaining twenty-nine chapters of “A Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”, which are the most accurate spiritual precepts so far in human history, Email:
    [email protected]
    with the acronym “FISH” in the subject field.
    ?
    “The gateway to knowing is IGNORANCE”. ?

  19. paleo mountain man Paleo Mountain man

    @Reverend Eslam to many chapters I’ll just close my eyes thank you.

  20. Reverend Eslam

    paleo mountain man Paleo Mountain man
    If it is true that there are none so blind as those who don’t WANT to see, and none so deaf as those who don’t WANT to hear, then surely, there are none so ignorant as those who don’t WANT to learn the truth.

    Incidentally, it’s called “Spell-Check”. Look into it, SILLY Sinful Slave.

  21. Lucinda Newcomb

    ❤️

  22. Wearethedivineone Earth

    Lovely?

  23. Shakil

    Good for you man. You don’t wanna listen to this guy. He is a rightwing misogynistic prick.

  24. Shakil

    Reverend eslam
    You are a narcissistic piece of shit with delusions of grandeur.

  25. Shakil

    Reverend eslam You are a fucking idiot.

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