Required reading...really

[SoulSail]

This book is a must if you're serious about The Big E, Awakening, whatever you want to call it. I probably read three books on Buddhism, meditation, etc. a month, and I've put everything down until I can get through this all the way.

Stepping Out of Self-Deception: The Buddha's Liberating Teaching of No-Self.

http://www.amazon.com/Stepping-Out-S...self+deception


Soul

[Sinera]

From the Amazon description:

"....getting past the idea that spirituality has something to do with self-improvement"

Well, isn't this in conflict with what many other spiritual teachers and authors tell and sell us? We needn't go far form here: Just take Robert for example. Just the title of his latest e-book "Evolution" already hints at this.

"The #1 thing that all spiritual practitioners NEED is growth." - Robert Bruce
http://www.astraldynamics.com/evolution/

So, who's right?

[SiriusTraveler]

Is this an easy read for a peson whos native language is not english/american?

[ButterflyWoman]

So, who's right?

Robert didn't write the copy for the advertising accompanying his book. His promotional company wrote it, and they're trying to appeal to a specific and certain audience, in order for Robert to sell his books. Furthermore, as I understand it, the book covers topics that are much more "expanded reality" based, metaphysical experiences, mystical experiences, and so on. That might well be considered, at least in some circles, to be "self improvement". It's certainly "experience expanding".

Robert knows perfectly well that awakening is NOT self improvement (ask him directly if you're uncertain; I'm sure he'll be happy to clarify).

[dreaming90]

I'll have to put this on my list! I'm a sucker for Buddhist philosophy.

[SoulSail]

And as for who's right...

I'll chime in only when experience and realization qualify me to sort that matter out.

Soul

[SoulSail]

The language isn't overly complicated at all--it's written for a broad audience, but many of the ideas presented may take several reads before you "get" them. At least, that's my dilemma. I'm just a bumpkin, really.


Soul

[Sinera]

Robert didn't write the copy for the advertising accompanying his book. His promotional company wrote it, and they're trying to appeal to a specific and certain audience, in order for Robert to sell his books. Furthermore, as I understand it, the book covers topics that are much more "expanded reality" based, metaphysical experiences, mystical experiences, and so on. That might well be considered, at least in some circles, to be "self improvement". It's certainly "experience expanding".

Robert knows perfectly well that awakening is NOT self improvement (ask him directly if you're uncertain; I'm sure he'll be happy to clarify).

I was referring not to awakening (or even enlightenment) but just taking the description as it is when it just talks about "spirituality NOT having to do with self-improvement". Had they inserted a "only" I would not even have taken issue with it. So why shouldn't it be conducive to personal improvement? For me it is obvious. Many people feel to have personal improvements when they 'practice' spirituality, and if 'only' by starting to meditate instead of the 'pro stuff' such as learning to AP or developing psychic skills.

It seems to me that Robert too seems to see spiritual 'improvement' / evolution / progress as a way to attain happiness in everyday human life, which is maybe also a kind of self-improvement (at least in my eyes). Others tell us the same, such as Tom Campbell who calls it 'lowering the entropy of your consciousness' as the "souls" overall goal in general (not just in the physical).

Ok, I agree that a book advertising is something differerent, but it was just the first I found after a quick browsing. If we look into the book it is not different. I still assume that he has written his book or at least approved of all which was written there.

I quote the relevant passage about happiness from his latest Ebook:

The Secret To Happiness
And by now, the answer to the infamous question,
“What is the secret to happiness?” should be abundantly
clear to you.
Dear reader, the secret to happiness is progress.
Evolutionary progress.
When you are working on your spirituality, and you’re
making progress, and YOU KNOW IT, you FEEL HAPPY
inside. You feel fulfilled.
The trick to understanding the secret to happiness, is
hidden inside the very word itself.
The word “happy” has the same prefix as the word
“happen”. The prefix is: “hap”
The prefix ‘hap’ means “to occur”.
So if you’re “happy” it means you have things
HAPPENING in your life.
What things? Those things related to your SPIRITUAL
PURPOSE.
The secret to happiness is spiritual evolutionary
progress. So if you want to feel happy, then go make
progress, and appreciate it, and you’ll feel happy.
Happiness is the cure for everybody’s depression,
sadness, and loneliness. It’s really just this simple."
- Robert Bruce (Evolution, Ebook 2011)

And what he wrote even today about life-changing OBE practice also reflects this for me.

Yes, of course, there are many more topics in the Ebook. But the book's 'leitmotif' (as reflected in the title, too) pops up here and there again and especially in the above quoted paragraphs.

[SoulSail]

I don't mean to do an end run on this post, but I trust that if we are to arrive at a destination, the whole idea is that we must journey like the Fool, Buddha, Christ, Borat, and/or Robert Bruce. We can take our "selves" along and perhaps find we would've been better off leaving them behind as Buddha and Christ taught...I don't know for certain (yet). I trust what I seek is seeking me, and so it's all instructive, every little bit of experience is instructive and guiding me to liberated ends. I trust that all the efforts I make are only pointing me toward The Source, whether up down, good or bad. I personally find happiness comes with counter-intuitive action: doing for others, thinking about others, forgetting my "self," dying to myself, forgetting evolution with its ends so I can be here now. After all...they (Buddha, Borat, etc.) could all be wrong, duped, or delusional. We only know by striking out on the paths that seem best. And like The Buddha, we may just find ourselves more splintered by "seeking" through self-improvement, but we can't know it until we've done it.

My point here is that the responsibility is always, always, always mine in the seeking department. Test Christ's words, test Buddha's, test Robert's...which ones satisfy? I've had mind blowing experiences in the Astral, just as so many here have (and most exceed me in trip count). I once experienced my own death in a transcendental moment. I mean, I experienced total cessation, death, gone. But none of these experiences hold a candle to simply befriending an old enemy here and now, or smiling straight into the eyes of some pimply kid that looks like he's ready to bail on the whole planet Earth experience. Know what I mean?


Soul

[ButterflyWoman]

I don't mean to do an end run on this post, but I trust that if we are to arrive at a destination

There really isn't one. There's no "there" to get to from "here". It doesn't make sense to you at this moment, but it makes perfect sense. It's that whole "paradox that isn't a paradox" thing. Because we generally experience time in linear steps, we tend to think of moving from this to that, with a period of experiences in between, but try, just for a moment, to remove that framework of "time" and what does it look like then? This is something that must be experientially understood, but if you understand it intellectually, it can help stop the tail-chasing that sometimes goes on (I spent years chasing my own tail ).

We can take our "selves" along and perhaps find we would've been better off leaving them behind as Buddha and Christ taught...I don't know for certain (yet).

In all honesty, your "self" never stops being "itself". It just gets to the point where, well, you get OVER yourself, you see your "self" for what it is. You still have it. And you still wear it and use it, because it is the interface for the material world you experience through it. This whole idea that you stop having a "self" is a misunderstanding, and an expression of fear that the "self" projects. It's more like the interface realises that it is nothing more than an interface. The hammer knows it's a hammer. The computer wakes up to itself as a computer, a tool of the User.

Or... think of it this way. You're playing an engaging video game. You've been playing it since birth, so you're completely engrossed in it, and it's all you've ever known. Then one day you start to realise, "Hang on.... This is not quite what it seems..." and you begin to experience something other than the game environment and you start to realise that, in fact, you are NOT the character. You see that its a character, and it's just an interface to the game reality. And it continues from there, until you come to see what you REALLY are, and what that character REALLY is. If you want to continue playing the game (and most of us do, at least for a while), you still need that game character. The You that really exists can't interact with the game reality directly.

That is the purpose of the self. To interface with material reality, to experience it, to be the filter through which the unique reality (game experience) is filtered and interpreted. No need to "lose" it or "kill" it or anything else of the sort.

My point here is that the responsibility is always, always, always mine in the seeking department.

Okay. That's what you need to go with for now. One day, the whole notion of having to seek anything will just go "pop!" and you'll wonder why you ever thought that. But for now, if you need to seek, do so.

Test Christ's words, test Buddha's, test Robert's...which ones satisfy?

Ultimately, none of them matter. At all. Awakening is not about you, or your self. It's about the One, waking up to Itself, through you, through your self.

Also note: I'm writing this not as some sort of "teacher" or anything (heaven forbid; that's the last thing I want to be or do!), but as someone who has simply been there and done that and recognises the situation. The things I wrote are what I have come to understand through my own experiences (or, my interpretation of my experiences, to be precise). My story does, indeed, match up with a number of others as far as this topic goes, but I think that speaks to the universality of the awakening process more than it says anything about me.