Is this path worth the risk?

**eyeoneblack** · 10th March 2013, 08:14 PM

Originally Posted by Butterfly

The "wouldn't dare" was actually tongue-in-cheek.

I'm saying that these things simply do not exist in my reality any more, at least, nowhere near me or anything I experience. I have no doubt that they can exist, have encountered them in various ways throughout my life, but not now. I don't have those kinds of nightmares now, sleeping, waking, in a trance, or in any other way. I've had enough baddies and meanies in my reality, and I don't create (allow) them any more. In my reality they do not exist. (A lot of things don't, in fact. This is the power of dissolving attachments and releasing beliefs.)

And...

Originally Posted by BFWoman

a title that's something like "Enlightenment (not for sissies)

Ditto on both counts!

I've noticed over the past several years that my reaction to a Real Life meanie is that whatever they say totally escapes me - just flies over (or under) me. The so-called assault on my person does not register.
I was asked a while back by a 'therapist' about having nightmares. I told her I would have go back 20+ years to find one. She wasn't interested in that, even though I would have described it, given a chance.

The "enlightenment not for sissies" is very much a part of it. Probably the only way to really get bullet-proof. But if you take it too far IRL people become offended. Everyone wants to be taken SERIOUSLY and I just don't really do that anymore.

But, like I said, I'll see that therapist again.

**Energize** · 11th March 2013, 01:44 AM

That's kinda kool. Impervious!

Oddly enough, it's been many many years since I've had a nightmare too eyeoneblack.
If I had to guess, I'd say that at some stage, I had a lucid dream or something, and learned (or was taught?) that you don't need to let it affect you...or even have them. I've read somewhere that nightmares are just an urgent message from your unconscious mind. Perhaps it's just that nothing too urgent has been coming through. Steady as she goes Capt'n.

By the way, I'm 7 pages into that enlightenment thread. The concept is fascinating. I'll start a new thread shortly to ask questions, but in the meantime just let me say that it seems a bit bleak. While reading Thomas Campbell's "My Big TOE: Awakening", I've come across the concept of God being almost a 'thing', kind of mechanistic in a way (I'm not expressing it well, need more time). But the concept of no one being real, no love, nothing...seems a bit nihilistic, debilitating, devoid of hope. Either I'm not understanding it correctly yet, or my ego is writhing under the spotlight. A loveless God in an empty void playing with finger puppets? Aw man, what a bummer. But whatever the truth is - I guess it is what it is. Just not sure what it is yet.

Ironically, this morning I found myself extra aware - of my wife, my sons, of our dog. I felt very aware of them as conscious, sentient beings, and feeling love for them. Just an illusion? Just my ego clinging to the dream? Hmm, dunno.

**ButterflyWoman** · 11th March 2013, 06:37 AM

You need to realise this, and your ego is NOT going to like it.

It's not about your ego. It's not about what your ego does or does not do. In fact, this entire process is subtractive, it takes AWAY from your ego. You ego right now is all, "hot damn, I'm gonna get enlightened!" or whatever, but that's actually impossible. It'd be like a cartoon drawing grabbing a pencil and erasing bits of itself and redrawing them. It's not possible. Ego wants to pretend it's doing this or that or the other, but it isn't. It may be aware of all sorts of things, sure, and sometimes those awarenesses make the process easier because ego doesn't freak right the heck out or it's more willing to go along with the program, but ego is no more in change than the cartoon character is.

So all this worry about clinging to this or releasing that... It's just ego trying to do something (or not do something) it has no power to do or not do. Ego can be a very entertaining thing to watch, so full of big ideas and brilliant plans. Like a little kid with a toy steering wheel, pretending to be driving the car, maybe even believing they're driving the car....