After watching a number of these discussions, and many other similar dialogues, I have noticed a pattern and theme. Nearly all of the time and energy is spent refining and organizing the rhetoric and terminology so that some kind of agreement can be reached, so that an “ah ha” or an “i get it” can be achieved. And there’s a problem with this. This seems to function as an endeavor seeking relief from the confusion and tension of a thought based analysis of reality. Don’t spend too much time in this mental space. It can perpetuate a disintegrated stance and result in perpetually limited and diminished experience. I say to myself, “live your life.”

@@timetobenotdo Precisely; but one mustn't overthink the proper way to live. For thought is but a game of mental Legos. In which we are but a small piece in a Lego castle so big that it's constantly in our field of experience. Too rigid to move it away, yet the want to move it is itself part of that very construction. Don't resist but shift your focus. Because reality is everything; and merely your focus and judgement determine which parts of it you experience as real. Mind determines which are good or bad, right or wrong, not because it is correct in assuming so, but because it allows mind to limit it's experience to tiny strips of data which are easily digested. To shut the curtains on life in favor of building that Lego Castle. We don't raise children, we build thinking machines. And then we wonder about all the troubles we get ourselves into. To think that intelligence is solely linked to logical thought was our biggest ever mistake.

@@Nicoladen1 Yes, there’s no way we can think ourselves out of the habit of thinking. Making the process of thinking into our main enemy will only lead to more suffering. Thinking or non-thinking is not what we should be focusing on. Our practice should focus on learning what mind really is. That process of learning goes way beyond mere thinking. When we understand how misconceptions arise we also understand how to relate to reality and ourselves in an unmistaken way. Then we understand from the root why craving and rejection is based on misconceptions. Then we abandon those tendencies naturally and without effort. We have seen and understood the root of our sufferings. As long as the root-cause and our fundamental nature haven’t been understood or experienced we will have other beliefs about ourself and the world than the real one. Thus we will continue to relate to ourselves and the world of phenomena in all kinds of mistaken ways.

@@timetobenotdo thanks, this point is so important. Fortunately more and more people ask this question. Still we should not pour out the baby with the bath water. Just to drop all spiritual approach and "live my life" due to my social conditioning is also no answer, I guess. There is some truth and it is huge. No doubt for me anymore. But what is and can be the connection to relative life? How to bring them in harmony? Is there an interaction between them? But I agree, the spiritual rethoric is often way to simple, limited and in the context of "ultimate truth" sort of dangerous.

Yes, these are timeless words of wisdom and needs to be available to us no matter when we hear them in the continuum of space and time.

Yes

That is probably what most people are doing. That is why awareness is so important.

Actually, when we are becoming increasingly aware we often experience more suffering as well. This is not because awareness produces suffering but because we are just becoming increasingly aware of the suffering we have been carrying with us a long time. For many practitioners the path towards awakening is a gradual one. It is as if we only allow ourselves to experience the maximum amount of suffering and adverse reactions to our ignorance in degrees that we can handle at the moment. This is the reason why the path towards enlightenment is a gradual path for most people rather than an instantaneous event. In theory, enlightenment is just a fraction of a second away, always. But in reality the journey towards it involves a lot of letting go - holding back along the way for most of us. To traverse the path towards enlightenment involves a lot of courage. At the end it comes down to if we dare letting go of our mistaken belief in a self, or not. A very unfortunate outcome of an overwhelming experience of suffering is that we believe it to be truly existent. Moreover, our belief in the existence of a self is often reinforced by the experience of suffering. It is as if the self seeks confirmation of its own existence in the perceived existence of the suffering we experience. Through this backwards logic the self finds ways to persuade us to hold onto an existence of a self believing that only then can we overcome suffering. This leads to a neurotic clinging to the sufferings we experience as a confirmation of our “personality” an “destined life” we project. The suffering we experience becomes our own and we cling to it as something precious.

It’s illusion in the sense what happens to the body can be observed from a higher place that isn’t touched by what happens to the body. Life Itself is what animates us and gives us all the experiences of living. Finding, feeling and trusting that “Life Itself” is enlightenment. I was that traumatized, war-torn child that somehow made it to that understanding and am okay now.

Suffering is not illusion but for what you are suffering or what makes you suffer is .