What would it look like?

I think it's time for yet another thread…

So, suppose we've achieved this state where we realize fully our non-dual nature and the fact that we are all one (including all of things that we are not, etc.).

What would this look like? Or rather, how would such a person function? How could you recognize someone living in this state and how do you think you would act or be if you were living 24/7 in this state?

Please, let's not get bogged down in Semantics… (as fun as it may be).

Re: What would it look like?

why should it look any different? Nonduality is reality now…and it’s reality still, after this realization/ascension by grace ‘occurs’.

As the Zen saying goes: ”before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.”

Functioning happens by the same means it always did…only the ego doesn’t get the chance to claim authorship of it…..it all happens by the Grace of God(as it did, even before the realization!).

…but if you want specifics…..it would seem that there’s less of a need for food…less bothering with details….just basically living as an instrument of God.

…as far as recognition goes, there’s always consciousness calibration via kinesiologic testing and the Map of Consciousness….and just a general bearing witness to the integrity of the field that a person participates in.

-Rob

Re: What would it look like?

As the Zen saying goes: ”before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.”

I might have a problem there.  I don't have a chainsaw and the last time I tried to carry water, it slipped through my fingers.  Slippery stuff, that water.

While I follow what Rob's saying and agree, there is a different experience of Reality / reality and of the function, which is changed by periods of incapacitation and the general shift in how things are experienced.

During the periods where it's harder to function in the world, a door opens and while you recognize it as a shape, the opening is seen as a spontaneous part of the dance.  There is no thought or realization that there is someone opening the door, so when a body steps out, it's seen as a spontaneous occurrance not tied to a “cause” of the door opening, just another part of the same dance - no realization or thought of where the body suddenly appeared from… it's irrelevant and would require the thinkingness to recall what's on the other side of the door.  Bodies move spontaneously and there is a realization (not quite a thought) that they are a dance unfolding, not individual people… the bodies aren't people, they're part of the dance.

My understanding is that that's around 600'ish and that the period that kind of perception passes and functionality returns.  In that state, it's hard to bring yourself to function in linear existance… a “body” says, “hello” and there's a vague realization, as if memory of a distant dream, that something is supposed to follow.  Either one drags oneself back to linear thought to struggle through conversation or remains and is not able to carry on conversation.

600'ish, Rob?


Tim

Re: What would it look like?

As long as “the dance” is 70's funk, I down with it.   ; )

Tim do you think periods of incapacitation occur in every case?  Can you experience this state with out incapacitation?  I know it happen to Doc Hawk and Ramana Maharishi.  Jesus sweated blood and Buddha felt like his bones were being crushed…but I wonder if evolution might come into play and lighten the load as more people effect the overall field?

Thoughts, comments, insults???  ; )

Re: What would it look like?

ROD…


I think there are different incapacitating experiences at different phases or transitions.  When you mention Jesus and Buddha, for example, that's a more extreme physical manifestation of it that probably comes at a higher level than that 600'ish.  Doc says that the human body is not yet evolved enough to handle some of these experiences at the highest levels, and that some leave this world for that reason.  This implies that at least the physical capacity to handle the energy should evolve in humans over time.  In evolution, “function determines form”… meaning, whatever function the body needs and is working toward will be a capacity manifested in form through evolution. The need to move on land (function) produced legs (form) from fins, the need to catch prey (function) produced muscular structures (form) built for speed, the need for defense (function) produced venom, spikes, camouflage markings, etc. (form)

I'd imagine each experience is different.  Can incapacitation be completely dodged?  Dunno.

The brief experience I mentioned about above was not incapacitating pain-wise and definitely wasn't any “load to be lightened!”  It wasn't a burden in any way.  There was just a difficulty functioning in a linear way.  Who knows?  Perhaps it was just the fact that it was a really big and sudden jump up and the suddenness didn't allow for adjustment.  If it had been a more gradual climb, would it have been the same?  Can't say.  It only lasted for a very short time and then I slid back down.

Hawkins has mentioned that adjustment to shifts in LoC can be disorienting at first, like putting on a new pair of glasses.  We also know that phases we go through on the MoC pass by with progress and/or time.  The Doc says that the incapacitation around 600 is passed by if the Divine Will is that the person progress and “return to” the world of function.  In my case, I returned by sliding back down the MoC (making the experience just a peak experience / glimpse), probably because it was MY will to return to function imposed, as opposed to a surrender to God's Will and whatever comes, comes.  In that respect, the experience hadn't completely done in my ego (some may say “well OBVIOUSLY!” *lol*), which poked its way back through with a perceived need to function again.

Hope that helps.


Tim

Re: What would it look like?

But to return to what Rob said, you see things the same physically, you just process and experience what's around you from a different paradigm.

Re: What would it look like?

Yeah.  Helped a lot.  Nice context there.  So much so that I don't really have a follow up.  Thank you.

Re: What would it look like?

I have asked myself this question many times.  It is a good one.  I think maybe the answer would be that it would look exactly the same as it does now.  Nothing would change except the judgements that I put on things and individuals.  For me, being means exactly that, being.  It means that I may be “good” or be “bad” but no matter what I am.  I think the thing to realize with THE ONE is that you can't escape it.  ITs like the finger trying to find the hand.  Its all part of the same.  I know for me that the only things that have changed as a result me awakening more, more, is that things don't seem to matter as much.  For Example, the way I feel and the way others act.  Anyway, I could be totaly wrong.

Re: What would it look like?

Corey…

Exactly right about the “except the judgements that I put on things and individuals” and the fact that things just are.

With the term “judgements,” you could expand that to concepts and meanings that we have attached to things.  One of the early lessons in A Course in Miracles is that (and this might not be the exact wording) “This _____ has no meaning” and that all meanings and values have been assigned by us.

Returning to my post about the door, which I kinda glossed over… (I've mentioned or described the experience a couple of times in forums, but still hesitate at times to get into it for various reasons)…

We know about doors.  As babies, before we knew the word door, we learned that they were hinged objects through which people moved to get from one area to another.  People walk through them, often turning the knob first, so when they open, one would expect a person to be the “cause” of the opening and anticipate a person to come through - a logical chain of events expected after learning it is the norm.  When a door moves, the normal reflexive chain of events is that our brain reaches into what it knows about doors and how they operate to know what to expect, what to anticipate.  (Side note: that process is not “experiencing the moment” since it is geared to anticipate the next… a distraction of predicting what may be coming as opposed to living in “the now.”  It's based in the egoic need to predict/anticipate in order to avoid danger.)

As I exprienced it, thinkingness and conceptualization were quiet, therefore concepts and meanings were set aside.  The door wasn't a door, it just was what was seen at face value, a shape - ie. “it just was,” without label or meaning.  The memory of what was beyond it didn't arise, the concept of how a door functions just wasn't, and the expectation that its opening had any significance wasn't there either.  Its opening occurred spontaneously and the emergence of a figure through it was not seen as related by “cause and effect.”  Both occurances were a spontaneous dance and whether the door coincidentally happened to open on its own or the person pushed it open didn't really matter.

Projection of values and comparisson of what was seen and what was “known” about what was seen dissolved.  There was no accessing of memory to process those things, there was just experience and observation.  In simply experiencing and observing, mentation falls away to the recognition you pointed out and past and future become irrelevant within non-linear experience.

(By the way, this post kinda brings me out of “post retirement”… haven't really been able to post anything in some time.  Just been living life, plus I've got a fried computer at home.  Figured I'd drop in - hope my expansion onto what you'd written helps!)


Tim

Re: What would it look like?

There are many  level of consciousness and after relisation we clearly perceive the difference in the level of consciousness. One  part of us is only witnessing and other part take contribution in the changes or event.
I think physically there is no difference in an enlighted person and a normal being, the difference is in the level of consciousness.

Re: What would it look like?

One of the primary practical consequences of the true nondual perspective, is that the idea of a family is almost totally nullified. This is because from a unified mind, you see instantly that there can be no special connection between persons owing to genetics. Perceiving this objective fact, you see that all people are equally deserving of your love, and that the birth circumstances have been something of an accident that threatens to propel you from the unitive state. You look around yourself, and notice that most “family ties” are actually arrangements of convenience, that weak minds could not achieve relationship other than by looking to those nearby, and are only able to form a few mental models for the personalities around them. Further, their minds are unable to differentiate noble traits from ignoble traits, so that they associate with the familiar rather than gravitating towards the noble regardless of birth circumstance. You see that this mental weakness, which cannot value another on the basis of his or her noble attributes, is a ubiquitous flaw in the human domain, which is why all turn their backs on one another in tiny isolated knots of family. No one can even begin to dream about any higher options.

This is how it works, humans grind against one another, and they begin to call it a “close relationship” when they have ground to accustomization. They call it a “deep relationship” because the child has been around so long, the parent has been around so long, but it is only an achievement of a single lifetime, a conquest of the senses. If people had truly attained the nondual perspective, as many seem to claim on this page, instantly you would no longer associate as families, except for the first few years of the child’s life. You would form large cooperative groups, communities of a thousand or more living in daily harmony, working with the joy of the others as your sole reward. Since these groups are not forming, I presume no one has truly reached non-duality, that you still say, “I love those people, but I love my family better.” In all practicality, this is how you live.

Re: What would it look like?

Everything is the perfect expression of that which it is. Recognizing family is not necessarily dualistic. One plays on a sports team, but it does not mean that one is unable to see through the illusion of opposing sides. Everything occurs as it occurs - even family. It is uncaused (nondualistically, there is no 'this' that prompts a 'that'; everything arises spontaneously of its own). Asserting that the appearance of association with a family is due to familiarity, or weakness of mind, or whatever, is simply false. At best these are hypothetical presumptions based on belief in causality. Karma might be a better way to describe the circumstance.

Of course to say 'everything' arises spontaneously of its own implies plurality, however, singularity/unity is not in competition with separateness. Often on the path of nonduality seekers take on a militant view against what is termed 'duality'…however, no such thing exists which can threaten Truth. This is where the Devotional aspect of the path becomes noteworthy, as Devotion transcends the concerns of the mind, which, like a computer, operates on a binary(dualistic) perceptual basis.

-Rob