Tim decides to eat 6 of the watermelons.
What is the mass of the sun?"
--Anonymous
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“It is easier to produce ten volumes of philosophical writings than to put one principle into practice.”
–Leo Tolstoy
Today’s Mind-Tickler is brought to you by the question mark.
Lots of them, actually.
Not for any grand reason. Just for fun.
I mean, who knows? Maybe with some different questions, we can tickle the mind into going some different places.
Will this Mind-Tickler change your life permanently?
Sure! Sure it will!*
The one instruction, if you’re going to play along, is to try to truly consider your answer. No glib, I’m energy! or It’s my ego! stuff. Because what the hell is that anyway? Be specific.
The game is to find your own way.
Just know that all gold stars for correct answers will spontaneously shift into nothingness shortly after concluding.
Let’s start with your oldest and bestest friend- you.
Whatever that is.
SENSE OF SELF:
Merriam Webster: The union of elements (such as body, emotions, thoughts, and sensations) that constitute the individuality and identity of a person
When it comes to your self, what is it that senses it?
Whatever that is, and also whatever it senses, are they the same thing?
Where is the self located? (Body? Brain?)
If it’s inside either, if the time ever comes to transcend, how does it get out, where does it go, and what happens to whatever is left behind?
I don’t know, officer. She was right here a minute ago. Then she suddenly said, “Aha!” And bam! She was gone.
Is the sense of self permanent?
If not, does it come and go?
If so, how can it leave? How can the sense of self ever go away, if the self is permanent?
If the sense of self does leave, where does it go?
What knows it’s gone?
If it's The Me, and then it goes away, how can you still be here?
AWARENESS
Merriam Webster: Awareness- the quality or state of being aware
Jed McKenna: Awareness is perfectly impersonal. There’s no MY awareness or YOUR awareness, there’s only awareness itself.
Gilbert Schultz: Awareness is the ever-present clarity of stable cognition or knowing. Awareness is the word for what it is prior to the one thing we are sure of.
Got that? Ok good.
What is aware?
Is awareness outside you?
Does it need you to know it’s there? If you don’t know awareness is there, is it there?
Does awareness require itself to know it's there?
If you don’t stay aware of awareness, does it take its toys and leave?
Is it conscious?
Is our own conscious awareness the same as the conscious awareness?
CONSCIOUSNESS
Merriam Webster: Consciousness- the quality or state of being aware
Rupert Spira: Consciousness transitions from "I am something” to “I am nothing,” and from “I am nothing” to “I am everything’, without ever being or becoming anything but itself.
Fred Alan Wolf: Consciousness is the creative element in the universe. Without it, nothing would appear.
What is consciousness?
Where does it live?
What generates it?
Does consciousness belong to humans? Is it ours?
Is it in the brain? If not and it is outside the brain, how do we know it’s there?
If consciousness is everything, then how, or why, would it need anything to change or shift?
SHIFT/ TRANSCENDENCE
Merriam Webster:
Shift- to move or change. Transcend: to rise above or go beyond the limits of
Gilbert Schultz: The ocean is the ocean. All the waves, large and small, are an apparent shifting of substance. The substance is H2O. The movement is a quality of H2O. There is no separate shift. The entire ocean is shifting constantly.
When it comes to you, what shifts?
From what, to what?
If something can transcend, if it leaves or rises or elevates or shifts, where does that leave you?
What leaves, what is it leaving, and where does it go?
What knows the shift happened?
What transcends the hardware of the brain, gets outside the brain/ego/personality in order to know itself?
AWAKENING/ ENLIGHTENMENT
Merriam Webster:
Enlightenment- a final blessed state marked by the absence of desire or suffering
Awakening- a rousing from sleep; coming into awareness
Jed McKenna: The enlightened state is not, as is commonly supposed, the special state. The unenlightened state is the magical, mysterious, incomprehensible state. Awake is just awake. It’s not something more, it’s everything less.
If you get enlightenment, is it yours? Do you own it?
What is incomplete without enlightenment? What lacks it?
What needs and wants it?
What knows it doesn’t have enlightenment, and how does it know?
If enlightenment isn’t here, is it then outside, as in, not included, in the vastness of consciousness?
Does awakening bring instant everyday life transformation? If so, how?
Does it at least help you not care about questions like these?
Well.
Do you need a nap?
If you never see another question mark again, will that be ok with you?
Yeah.
So, may the dust bunnies under the bed magically sweep themselves out. May money appear in your bank account, may all your wounds heal, may your life expectancy extend.
May hard feelings instantly change to joy, leaving your nonexistent self peaceful and transformed.
Because now that these all-important life-changing questions have been attended to, everyday life can transform into something...
Higher. Better. More evolved.
More worth living.
Transcendent.
And of course there's
no question about that.*
*sarcasm
Click here to get your Mind-Tickled every week.
Click here to watch Judy on Buddha at the Gas Pump
Click to watch Judy and Walter have fun chatting about about
nonduality, the self, consciousness, awareness, free will
and other light and breezy stuff
Judy And Robert Saltzman talk nonduality
and again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fv_vsvaejs
and again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DAn8Rqg3I0
"People, it seems, believe that consciousness
Requires a mind and body. What you are in reality is
Prior to being anything in particular."
--wu'hsin
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"I am Pure Awareness prior to form!" "I have no ego!" "There is no me!" "I am fully self-realized!"
Yes, yes, dear one. Thank you for sharing. Beautiful words.”
–Jeff Foster
