Mind Enlightenment vs. SR

Muttley: Sure, seems to me unlikely that a Zen guy would use the dream/dreamer metaphor. I had objections to that metaphor when I first started posting here. This despite that my questioning of material realism was a major path component. It took E' explaining that analogizing perception to a dream wasn't to dismiss "the dream" as inconsequential to put that to rest. This is what Jeff did in that paragraph - dismiss the dream, as just a dream. Niz once replied that this just results in a worser dream.

The tantric aspect of the Zen approach, the returning to the sensory here and now (which is a phrase that's far too heavy with concepts, so I doubt it finds much use in Zen), that's in the 180 degree opposite direction of the psychedelic approach of questioning material realism. But, that's the way the existential truth rolls: devotion and insight, for another example, are also 180 degrees in opposition. But both roads lead in the same direction, away from the false. The analytic mind lands on confusion in the comparison.

A bird chirping, the sound of a snowflake, or a pebble hitting a wall, each involve the same poetic, catalytic sensory twist. The descriptions of penetrating the illusion of thingness often involve the metaphor of dissolution. These can be either gentle, or jarring, and in the case of either illusion - personhood or thingness - the resulting informing of mind will vary between individuals. Tolle's story, for instance, is of an explosive realization, rather than the subtle event Adya describes. The way I'd fit Tolle into kensho/sr is that he suddenly penetrated the illusion of personhood which led him into a very long and deep kensho, which eventually transitioned into an even longer period of informing of mind. It's notable that I don't recall Tolle ever writing about any illusion other than the falsity of ego, and even in that, he doesn't use the idea of illusion.

Even the notion of illusion, itself, can confound even the best analysts. Blake, for example, had a boyhood experience of a sort of psychedelic vision:

According to Gilchrist, on one ramble he was startled to “see a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars.” His parents were not amused at such a story, and only his mother’s pleadings prevented him from receiving a beating.

The filtered light through a leafy canopy, likely in the motion of a breeze. It enlightened young Billy as to an alternative perspective on the real. ZD, he describes a person and a room dissolving on the ringing of a telephone. It is this shattering of the apparently coherent and solid material realism to which the dream/dreamers mean to point. It is ideas about realism that form the basis of the analysts dream.

Reefs:
Notice how Jeff is all about dream/play, stories/narratives and appearances and how Adya doesn't even use these words!

Zendancer: Exactly, and for good reason.

"This life is a dream. To call it a dream is not to disparage it; that doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile. It's no different from dreams you have at night. You wake up from your dreams into this dream we call life, and when you go to sleep, you wake up in another dream world. But that which is awake in both worlds, the dreamer, is always the same. Awareness is always present. That's the reality. What doesn't come and go, even in the dream state? That's who you are."
~ Adyashanti

My speaking is meant to shake you awake, not to tell you how to dream better.
Adyashanti


This one question-'What do I know for certain?'-is tremendously powerful. When you look deeply into this question, it actually destroys your world. It destroys your whole sense of self, and it's meant to. You come to see that everything you think you know about yourself, everything you think you know about the world, is based on assumptions, beliefs, and opinions-things that you believe because you were taught or told they were true. Until we start to see these false perceptions for what they really are, consciousness will be imprisoned within the dream state.
Adyashanti





he also references 'stories'...

If you tell yourself a sad story, the body reacts to that. And if you tell yourself a self-aggrandizing story, the body feels puffed up, confident. But when you realize it’s all stories, there can be a vast waking up out of the mind, out of the dream. You don’t awaken, what has eternally been awake realizes itself. That which is eternally awake is what you are.
Adyashanti

Reefs:Yes, you can find hints of it in the poetry of the transcendentalists. But the best source I know for this kind of poetry is probably Rumi.

I am 2/3 thru Jeff's first book, and still no trace of suchness to be found. So I'll stand by what I've said earlier.

Just compare these two quotes - one from Jeff, one from Adya:

Exhibit A

Jeff: In this book, the possibility is suggested that there is only ever the present appearance of life, with no individual at its core who could ever escape even if they wanted to. Indeed, the individual is merely another appearance in the play, not something that needs to be accepted or rejected, transcended or denied, but something that simply appears, along with all the other sights, sounds, smells, thoughts and feelings.

This message is so simple, so obvious. The individual (the seeker, the sufferer, the candlestick maker) simply appears as another part of the play of life. And with it may come the desire to escape from life, but that too is merely another appearance, another part of the narrative.

And all of this is absolutely fine; none of it needs to be accepted or rejected, transcended or denied. Suffering is fine, seeking some sort of spiritual enlightenment or liberation is fine, precisely because there is nobody there that any of this happens for, or to, in the first place. "A person at the centre of it all" is just another appearance, another belief, another part of the story.

Beyond belief or lack of it, beyond anything that words could ever state, beyond all beyonds, there is always this, now and forever.

Exhibit B:

Adya: Awakening to truth or reality is something that is very hard to talk about because it is transcendent of speech. It is helpful, nevertheless, to work with some sort of a guidepost. The simplest thing one can say about the experiential knowledge of awakening is that it is a shift in one’s perception. This is the heart of awakening. There is a shift in perception from seeing oneself as an isolated individual to seeing oneself, if we have a sense of self at all after this shift, as something much more universal—everything and everyone and every- where at the same time.

This shift is not revolutionary; it’s the same as looking in the mirror in the morning and having an intuitive sense that the face you are looking at is yours. It is not a mystical experience; it is a simple experience. When you look in the mirror, you experience the simple recognition, “Oh, that’s me.” When the shift of perception that’s called awakening happens, whatever our senses come into contact with is experienced as ourselves. It’s as if we think with everything we encounter, “Oh, that’s me.” We don’t experience ourselves in terms of our ego, in terms of a separate someone or separate entity. It’s more a feeling of the One recognizing itself, or Spirit recognizing itself.

Spiritual awakening is a remembering. It is not becoming something that we are not. It is not about transforming ourselves. It is not about changing ourselves. It is a remembering of what we are, as if we’d known it long ago and had simply forgotten. At the moment of this remembering, if the remembering is authentic, it’s not viewed as a personal thing. There is really no such thing as a “personal” awakening, because “personal” would imply separation. “Personal” would imply that it is the “me” or the ego that awakens or becomes enlightened.

But in a true awakening, it is realized very clearly that even the awakening itself is not personal. It is universal Spirit or universal consciousness that wakes up to itself. Rather than the “me” waking up, what we are wakes up from the “me.” What we are wakes up from the seeker. What we are wakes up from the seeking.


Notice how Jeff is all about dream/play, stories/narratives and appearances and how Adya doesn't even use these words!