radical no holds barred self enquiry

[david_obsidian]

Einstein, when asked in later life why his greatest discoveries were mainly in his youth, said: "Discovery comes from defying authority. The reward for discovery is to become an authority, and that is the end of discovery."

BTW, I think Einstein is mistaken in an important way there; the process is actually the reverse of what Einstein speaks of.  Discovery, insight,  leads to the 'defying of authority' at the right time and place, not the other way around.  When your insight, your discovery, tells you that the 'authorities' are mistaken,  their 'authority' is reduced in your mind.  Then you just need bravery, to speak of what you see.  No emotional posture of defiance is needed at all in that creative process and if it is there, it is not actually helping. When he states it backwards like that, it sounds like a feel-good cliche for adolescents and militants!

[weaver]

Einstein, when asked in later life why his greatest discoveries were mainly in his youth, said: "Discovery comes from defying authority. The reward for discovery is to become an authority, and that is the end of discovery."

As an alternative to David's view of Einstein's statement, I can also see validity in "Discovery comes from defying authority" from this point of view: If you in your consciousness dare to defy authority, meaning commonly established and accepted views in society, or among other people, of how things are supposed to work in life or in laws of nature, then you are more open in your mind to alternative views and new possibilities, and then you have created more freedom for yourself to make new discoveries.

[Anthem]

Hi Yogani,

I guess you are warming up for your book here, so I will try to serve as a sounding board. I pretty much have a similar perspective as you though.
 

quote:
Spiritual transformation is not an instant event. It only may seem like it is sometimes. If we are seduced by an inner experience, we can fall into an ongoing non-dual rationalization or energy obsession. This can hold us back, as we favor our illusion of attainment over real practice. That is why in AYP we favor our practices over our experiences. Then we will have constantly expanding results. The real signal of enlightenment is the emergence of unending loving service to others. Odd as it may seem, this is the only unmistakable manifestation of enlightenment. Actions over time speak much louder than words.

I like this a lot, giving ourselves to ever on-going practice keeps our minds open-ended and not locked down as having done it, a great built in safe-guard to our life long spiritual path.
 

quote:Does self inquiry cultivate inner silence, or does inner silence cultivate self inquiry?

I think both. First I will say that I agree self-inquiry will seem like gibberish to a mind without enough resident inner silence. Second, without direct feedback from someone who can see around your delusion, there will come a time for everyone where self-inquiry gets stuck as it can be extremely difficult to see our way through issues we are very caught up in. I also think self-inquiry becomes automatic after a while as all thoughts lose their meaning.

Having said all that, I think Byron Katie has been able to put Self-inquiry into a form that is both appealing and practical for a large percentage of the masses who are interested in spiritual development. It is these folks we are talking about I guess, not much hope in getting others involved in spiritual practices of any kind until they are ready? If people take the time to fill out their work sheets properly as Katie teaches, I think a lot of progress can be made. I see self-inquiry as increasing inner-silence as thoughts fall away, it certainly has increased my awareness.

I think using self-inquiry exclusively is definitely the slow way to the top of the spiritual mountain. I think it is one of the tools for a dedicated yogi, not the only one or primary one. To me, meditation is the primary tool as it will start the ball rolling in all departments of practice by putting us in touch with Being and increasing our inner silence.

Sometimes I wonder about self-enquiry creating inner silence without full energy development and the resulting ecstatic bliss, making some spiritual teachers who have realized oneness seeming to be devoid or low on ecstasy and bliss. Maybe they just don’t talk about it, I’m not sure.

A

[Scott]

Byron Katie's self enquiry is a useful tool for someone breaking through delusions, but it has nothing to do with the self enquiry that I was discussing earlier.  I hope that's clear.  One is a direct method to samadhi, and one is a self help tool.

[Anthem]

Scott could you elaborate on what differences you see here, to me they are one and the same. Maybe you could describe the process of self-inquiry you are referring to?

thanks,[]

A

[david_obsidian]

If you in your consciousness dare to defy authority, meaning commonly established and accepted views in society, or among other people, of how things are supposed to work in life or in laws of nature, then you are more open in your mind to alternative views and new possibilities, and then you have created more freedom for yourself to make new discoveries.

Yes, all that is true, but I still don't think that 'Discovery comes from defying authority' is a particularly useful instruction.  I believe it is totally over-rated, and its power is deeply illusory.  In the colleges I saw, it was practically rammed down the student's throats.  It was a fashionable, hip thing to say and believe.  And yet those who believed were as prone to falling into orthodoxies as anyone else.  Those who made it a regular touchstone were, if anything, more prone to falling into orthodoxies than other people.  Orwell's sheep were bleating every day, 'we must not be sheep, we must defy authority'.  Others confused their anti-authority posture,  and bleating, with insight and wisdom. Often their emotional anti-authority posture was actually retarding their development of insight more than helping it.

Sure, people need an open mind as a necessary ingredient of insight. But then, 'Discovery comes from defying authority' is like 'Superb health comes from vitamin-B'. If you are short on vitamin-B, you need some, end of story. If you are not, you don't, end of story.  If you have even a decent amount of it, it won't do anything decisive to you.

BTW,  I certainly don't believe that Einstein lost any of that ability to 'defy authority', or that that had anything to do with his much weaker contribution to physics in his later life. That's absolute rubbish,  I'm confident of that. In answering that question, he's a celebrity giving the expected, 'sage', quotable-cliche response when the right answer to that particular question is much less exciting and deceptively 'inspiring'.  The right answer to 'Why Einstein, could you no longer contribute so much in your later years' is more like: 'I tried hard, but I was no longer able to.  I'm not sure why -- perhaps age was part of it -- most major contributions in Physics and Math are made by younger men.  And some of it may have been that my particular mind was suited to the particular discoveries I needed to make.  In other words, something was waiting to be discovered that I had particular skills for. I was less good at what came after that.'

Nor do I believe that his ability to produce as he did when he was younger had much to do with any particular ability to defy authority.

In the 20th-century you will see some geniuses like Einstein tending to explain their particular genius in terms of defying authority.  Silly men. It's like imagine Michael Jordan attributing his success to adequate Vitamin B -- or defying authority. It just isn't reality,  even if it might be fun to believe it is.  Is celebrity destined to go to the heads of all who become celebrities, and keep them from telling it like it is any more?

[Scott]

Anthem,

In the self enquiry I was referring to, whenever a thought appears you are to question where it came from and not think about an answer.  You wouldn't be doing it right if you were to think "it came from here" or "there".  The goal is to turn the mind back upon itself, so that it is simply seeing and not thinking.

It's similar to the "i am" meditation, in that when you notice you aren't thinking of the object of meditation you easily bring your mind back to it.  But with self enquiry, you don't bring your mind back to a thing but rather the process which becomes aware of things.

Correct practice would be awareness of awareness, and when the mind comes back to an object of awareness, you use the tool to turn it back upon itself so that once again it's only aware of being aware and nothing else.

This website has good instructions:
http://uarelove1.tripod.com/AWA_INSTRUCTIONS1.htm

[Scott]

Continuing,

In Byron Katie's self enquiry, you ask yourself key questions which dismantle the ego.  But when you answer those questions truthfully, after a while, without meditation practice in place and having no inner silence, your ego simply adapts to the questions.

Think of delusion as a building.  Her method attacks the walls, and tears them apart so that only the frame is standing.  The self enquiry method I refer to attacks the frame, and not the walls, so that the walls collapse upon themselves.

The two together completely destroy the building.

Perhaps you know more about this...if so, could you explain why you see no difference between the two methods?

[Balance]

Originally posted by Scott

"Anthem,

In the self enquiry I was referring to, whenever a thought appears you are to question where it came from and not think about an answer.  You wouldn't be doing it right if you were to think "it came from here" or "there".  The goal is to turn the mind back upon itself, so that it is simply seeing and not thinking."


Hi Scott. In checking out the site I didn't see instruction to question where a thought came from. On the contrary, I saw instruction to not give thought any attention, just to turn awareness away from thought and toward itself.

[Scott]

Yep, you're right Balance.  I meant to turn awareness away from thought and towards itself.

[Balance]

Thanks Scott, I figured that's what you meant

[Anthem]

quote:Originally posted by Scott

Continuing,

In Byron Katie's self enquiry, you ask yourself key questions which dismantle the ego.  But when you answer those questions truthfully, after a while, without meditation practice in place and having no inner silence, your ego simply adapts to the questions.

I agree without inner silence present, self-inquiry is difficult. However some people have inner silence without having meditated and can do well with self-inquiry.
 

quote:Perhaps you know more about this...if so, could you explain why you see no difference between the two methods?

When I said the methods being one and the same, I was referring to Yogani's use of the term "self-inquiry" and Katie's method. I see Katie's way as just being a clearly defined method to achieve self-inquiry which to me is the process of bringing awareness to the world of virtual thought or "delusion" if you prefer. To me all Self-Inquiry comes down to asking ourselves "What Is" (true), what is found is that Being/ Awareness is True.

The method you describe of bringing your attention to what Is Aware has been described often by members of the forum as bringing their attention back into the here and now, into presence or being, from my perspective this is all falls under the same banner of the process of self inquiry.

A

[yogani]

Hi David:

Obviously, those who defy authority for the sake of defying authority aren't going to progess much more than those who uphold authority for the sake of upholding authority. Both are out on the edges and can't see the middle.  

In Einstein's case, he was considered a misfit and a never-do-well, flunked math (famously now) and was kicked out of school. When he put together the theories of relativity, he was working as a bureaucrat in the Swiss patent office. No doubt he was a creative genius all along, but his disregard for authority was obviously going on for a long time too. Or maybe he just didn't care what people thought. Is that defying authority? It is said he didn't even speak as a child until much later than usual.

The relevance of his idea on authority usurping creativity, as used here, doesn't have much to do with your well-stated argument about the abuses. Rather, it is about how when new innovations happen and are finally accepted (usually after a struggle), they then become the status quo, and the window for further new innovations looking beyond the original one tends to close. Einstein felt this was true of him personally, and it is obviously true of many institutions as well. As something or someone becomes prominent, a kind of paralysis creeps in. Maybe it is like an actor being type cast.  

It is very difficult to change what has been established in the public mind, unless an environment fostering constant innovation can be established and sustained. In that case, the status quo can be constant innovation. That is the hope for this AYP community.  

Einstein became the icon of a certain scientific ideology (mythologized!), and he was not able to go much beyond it. When quantum physics came along, introducing probabilities into the exploration of the inner energy realms, Einstein dismissed it out of hand by saying (famously again), "God does not play dice." He was wrong, and that is where the forward march of physics into the subtle realms started to leave him behind.

The point being that if knowledge is being calcified by the status quo (or for any other reason), we'd better be prepared challenge that if we want to advance. That is why I used the quote.

It has certainly been true in spiritual circles, where the problems have been much more severe, because so few have come along in history with innovations. The traditions have been bastions of authority with very few coming along with new approaches to aid spiritual progress. Those who did were treatly very unkindly, like crucified or burned at the stake. Come to think of it, some forward-leaning scientists were burned at the stake too. Fortunately, times have changed, in many places anyhow.

Meanwhile, the wheels of progress just keep turning, because human beings simply must know the truth about themselves and everything else. The good news is that we can not only know the truth, we can live it too.

The guru is in you.    

[Scott]

Anthem,

quote:I agree without inner silence present, self-inquiry is difficult. However some people have inner silence without having meditated and can do well with self-inquiry.

That's what I meant by the ego adapting to the self enquiry.  They learn how to play the new game, of dismantling delusions, never actually dismantling the ego.  Their ego simply becomes more tricky.

Many people have have enhanced their lives, but who has achieved genuine enlightenment from this method?  That question is a good measuring device of how effective a practice is in terms of dismantling the ego.

quote:When I said the methods being one and the same, I was referring to Yogani's use of the term "self-inquiry" and Katie's method. I see Katie's way as just being a clearly defined method to achieve self-inquiry which to me is the process of bringing awareness to the world of virtual thought or "delusion" if you prefer. To me all Self-Inquiry comes down to asking ourselves "What Is" (true), what is found is that Being/ Awareness is True.

I don't think Katie's method has to do with finding being/awareness to be true.  It has more to do with just seeing how flawed your initial reactions are.  I don't know much of Yogani's idea of self inquiry, so I can't comment on that.

I like how you say the Byron self enquiry method brings awareness to the world of thought...that is what it does.  But there's a bit of a difference between becoming aware of distinctions in thought, and "the witness".  Although both use the same word, the techniques aren't similar at all.

quote:The method you describe of bringing your attention to what Is Aware has been described often by members of the forum as bringing their attention back into the here and now, into presence or being, from my perspective this is all falls under the same banner of the process of self inquiry.

I agree that is what the technique involves, but I don't see how this can fall under the same banner as "the work".  They're very different techniques with very different results.

[david_obsidian]

Yogani said:
The relevance of his idea on authority usurping creativity, as used here, doesn't have much to do with your well-stated argument about the abuses.

Yes,  I'd agree entirely.  I'm on something of a side-bar. My point is a somewhat different one to yours,  doesn't contradict yours,  is less close to the discussion, but has some merit of its own I think.