Do you mean liberationunleashed dot com, the “global movement of people helping others to see through the illusion of a separate self”? I’ll pass. I am very much aware of my own self, and when meditating even more so. Hey, I already have things! Including a self!
Very curious web site. I looked at several of their articles and you could replace their central claim, that “you have no self”, by anything else, and it would make as much sense. For example, from their page “The Gate”:
“First of all you will need to set a clear intention to see the truth, no matter what. That might be scary, but necessary. If you are serious about stepping through the gateless gate you need to bring courage and honesty with you.
“Commit and get liberated. The exit that you are looking for is here.
“Clear the expectations. Of course you know a lot about what enlightenment is and what liberation should be and feel like. So just write it all down. Make a list of every bit of what you think it’s gonna do for you. Then leave it all to rest. We are going to guide you to see what is true for yourself.
“The biggest obstacles are fear, resistance and distraction. Fear is a mechanism that is guarding illusion from being found out for what it really is. Resistance comes up through feelings and thoughts that you can not do it. And mind will play all kind of tricks to distract you from direct looking. You will need courage, burning desire for truth and focus.
“Once you bypass the fear then it’s easy. You look at the truth that X. X. X. You look at the thought with the thought, examine labels, mind function to label experience and find out for yourself what it is that you know for sure.
“The simple fact is that, in a very literal sense, X. Once this is seen, it can never be unseen.”
And so on. Their article “Where is the I” could equally well be repurposed to prove that there is no such thing as a jumbo jet.
I took the point of the site to be what they say it is, over and over again on every page. That is the concept that they definitely cluster at, and I find it no more credible than any other woo. If their point is something else, they really suck at communicating it. This thing screams “cult” all over.
“Choose the path of least resistance and it will be easy. Resists [sic] and we will slap you.”
‘Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party.’
‘Does he exist in the same way as I exist?’
‘You do not exist,’ said O’Brien.
Once again the sense of helplessness assailed him. He knew, or he could imagine, the arguments which proved his own nonexistence; but they were nonsense, they were only a play on words. Did not the statement, ‘You do not exist’, contain a logical absurdity? But what use was it to say so? His mind shrivelled as he thought of the unanswerable, mad arguments with which O’Brien would demolish him.
‘I think I exist,’ he said wearily. ‘I am conscious of my own identity. I was born and I shall die. I have arms and legs. I occupy a particular point in space. No other solid object can occupy the same point simultaneously. In that sense, does Big Brother exist?’
Let me try again. This might not help but I am going to try anyway just in case it does.
I suspect that you personally don’t get spirituality because every time you intend to move towards it you are accidentally doing the opposite thing.
Like flow state. You can’t get into flow by constantly without taking a break, asking if you are in flow yet.
You need to do less complicated thinking and relax your “try hard at it” muscle.
The whole thing is “simple and obvious” by that I don’t mean “and you should be able to get it easy and feel bad for not getting it”, rather I mean, “and it does not require any more complex thinking or strategy than you already have”. It’s simple in the sense that it’s not a trick or a trap or a cryptic thing. It is in fact even less and boring and ordinary. In that sense you may already have bits of spirituality that you just took as “background noise” in your life.
I have no judgement around if you get it or not. It just is. Don’t worry about it and it will be easier to get there.
Try to do the opposite and see what happens. Or describe what will happen if you do the opposite of the things you have tried.
The opposite of all the things I have done in this area would be to ignore the matter. Which I did, before I was interested in this. So that does not leave much.
The whole “it’s so simple!” shtick is what the cactus person and the green bat said to Scott Alexander, and what Val and others have said to LessWrong, and is the totality of liberationunleashed, but all I see is inferential distance and no attempt to cross it. (I am not demanding that you make such an attempt.) Of all the things that I know, I would not try to teach any of them by saying how simple it is and how all you need to do is not do, and drop all assumptions, and just see the truth of the matter, and conquer your fear, and [cont’d p.94]
There’s a reason that these things sound like repeating advice. And it’s because from the other side of the inferential distance they sound like the right advice.
It’s frustrating from this vantage point too.
I guess you don’t need to worry until someone with a better description comes along.
Do you mean liberationunleashed dot com, the “global movement of people helping others to see through the illusion of a separate self”? I’ll pass. I am very much aware of my own self, and when meditating even more so. Hey, I already have things! Including a self!
Very curious web site. I looked at several of their articles and you could replace their central claim, that “you have no self”, by anything else, and it would make as much sense. For example, from their page “The Gate”:
“First of all you will need to set a clear intention to see the truth, no matter what. That might be scary, but necessary. If you are serious about stepping through the gateless gate you need to bring courage and honesty with you.
“Commit and get liberated. The exit that you are looking for is here.
“Clear the expectations. Of course you know a lot about what enlightenment is and what liberation should be and feel like. So just write it all down. Make a list of every bit of what you think it’s gonna do for you. Then leave it all to rest. We are going to guide you to see what is true for yourself.
“The biggest obstacles are fear, resistance and distraction. Fear is a mechanism that is guarding illusion from being found out for what it really is. Resistance comes up through feelings and thoughts that you can not do it. And mind will play all kind of tricks to distract you from direct looking. You will need courage, burning desire for truth and focus.
“Once you bypass the fear then it’s easy. You look at the truth that X. X. X. You look at the thought with the thought, examine labels, mind function to label experience and find out for yourself what it is that you know for sure.
“The simple fact is that, in a very literal sense, X. Once this is seen, it can never be unseen.”
And so on. Their article “Where is the I” could equally well be repurposed to prove that there is no such thing as a jumbo jet.
You missed the point of the site. They definitely cluster at a concept. I don’t need to convince you. Come back to it in ten years when you are ready.
I took the point of the site to be what they say it is, over and over again on every page. That is the concept that they definitely cluster at, and I find it no more credible than any other woo. If their point is something else, they really suck at communicating it. This thing screams “cult” all over.
“Choose the path of least resistance and it will be easy. Resists [sic] and we will slap you.”
‘Does Big Brother exist?’
‘Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party.’
‘Does he exist in the same way as I exist?’
‘You do not exist,’ said O’Brien.
Once again the sense of helplessness assailed him. He knew, or he could imagine, the arguments which proved his own nonexistence; but they were nonsense, they were only a play on words. Did not the statement, ‘You do not exist’, contain a logical absurdity? But what use was it to say so? His mind shrivelled as he thought of the unanswerable, mad arguments with which O’Brien would demolish him.
‘I think I exist,’ he said wearily. ‘I am conscious of my own identity. I was born and I shall die. I have arms and legs. I occupy a particular point in space. No other solid object can occupy the same point simultaneously. In that sense, does Big Brother exist?’
‘It is of no importance. He exists.’
Cute. 1984 I guess.
Let me try again. This might not help but I am going to try anyway just in case it does.
I suspect that you personally don’t get spirituality because every time you intend to move towards it you are accidentally doing the opposite thing.
Like flow state. You can’t get into flow by constantly without taking a break, asking if you are in flow yet.
You need to do less complicated thinking and relax your “try hard at it” muscle.
The whole thing is “simple and obvious” by that I don’t mean “and you should be able to get it easy and feel bad for not getting it”, rather I mean, “and it does not require any more complex thinking or strategy than you already have”. It’s simple in the sense that it’s not a trick or a trap or a cryptic thing. It is in fact even less and boring and ordinary. In that sense you may already have bits of spirituality that you just took as “background noise” in your life.
I have no judgement around if you get it or not. It just is. Don’t worry about it and it will be easier to get there.
Try to do the opposite and see what happens. Or describe what will happen if you do the opposite of the things you have tried.
The opposite of all the things I have done in this area would be to ignore the matter. Which I did, before I was interested in this. So that does not leave much.
The whole “it’s so simple!” shtick is what the cactus person and the green bat said to Scott Alexander, and what Val and others have said to LessWrong, and is the totality of liberationunleashed, but all I see is inferential distance and no attempt to cross it. (I am not demanding that you make such an attempt.) Of all the things that I know, I would not try to teach any of them by saying how simple it is and how all you need to do is not do, and drop all assumptions, and just see the truth of the matter, and conquer your fear, and [cont’d p.94]
There’s a reason that these things sound like repeating advice. And it’s because from the other side of the inferential distance they sound like the right advice.
It’s frustrating from this vantage point too.
I guess you don’t need to worry until someone with a better description comes along.