[snayan]

I'll admit I know very little about Buddhism beyond what I learned at a Vipassana retreat a little while ago.

My own journey has led me to believe that it is the ego that stands in the way of us realizing our true nature. I believe we are born into a state of non-duality, and over time our lived experience is harnessed by the ego to create the separate false self.

To use your jewel example, our perception is distorted by the egoic lens through which we view the world, hiding the jewel within all of us. And, in my experience, this process is confusing as fuck because it is one of subtraction rather than addition, only by directly questioning our beliefs can we begin to shed them. As we shed them, the jewel will begin to shine through.

Is one moment enough? I mean, in theory, if someone could update their priors to understand that the only truth is that I am consciousness and all other beliefs are ultimately bullshit we perceive as real, then sure, done, enlightenment obtained. But, the ego has spent decades for most of us building up walls of false belief around the jewel, so, they likely need to be slowly and sometimes excruciatingly dismantled.

I also think it bears mentioning that the ego evolved in times when safety and food/shelter/physiological needs in general were not pretty much guaranteed as is today(Yes, I recognize this is not globally true at the individual level, but generally speaking, we're better off than we were at any point in history on this front.) The environment ego was borne out of was also stable over a human lifespan. Although it's been accelerating for I dunno, 10000 years or so, these statements were likely still true in the times of Buddha for the most part, so we are likely playing a slightly different game now in some senses.

The ego has jumped the shark in modernity. I'd peg it as speeding up noticeably since the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment Era, getting really fucking weird post WW2, and being absolutely fucking insane since the dot com era, and yet, still accelerating noticeably. We now live in an exponential age of abundance and the ego is simply not build for it in my opinion. John Vervaeke calls it the meaning crisis, I think it's simply the manifestation of many humans reaching their abstraction limit. Most of us would benefit from fostering awareness of the machinations of ego so we are not a slave to them, a slave to all the abstractions. Are the ego's stories serving you? Or are you serving the ego's stories?

And, all of this is not to villainize the ego. A life driven by fear is often a productive one. Ego brought us the vast majority of the technological advancement that provides many of us with a comfortable life. That allows us to discuss the universal search for truth with someone on the other side of the world, through a screen. And, set aside whether all this technology and advancement is good or bad. If there was no ego, if everyone was enlightened, life would probably be a hell of a lot more boring. Ego gets full credit for making Humanity the greatest show on earth.

[prieveschl]

Indeed the ego and its power to drive advancement can be forces for good, and your example of this chat is a perfect one. How amazing we get to share POVs from across the globe in seconds, hopefully broadening our own and anyone who looks in’s horizons of understanding and ultimately truth (whatever that means). But this “hard” problem of consciousness seems to always get in the way of my understanding of the concept of enlightenment. I try to see it in the word, enlightenment - to lighten the weight of - and perhaps view it as a moment to moment practice of continually lightening the ever-present load of suffering, ego, and consciousness. Be here we are again, up against the hard problem, a metacognizant trying to use the mind to describe the process of getting around the mind.

[snayan]

Amen brother. I spun myself in circles for decades, but read a few books by Jed McKenna last year that helped me get out of my own way as it were. The process of what he calls spiritual autolysis, which is basically just writing your beliefs down and asking what is true was deeply impactful in my own journey. Give him a read if you're open to attacking the problem from a different angle.

My take at present: All our beliefs are nonsense that has been ingrained in us through our lived experience. Our perception of suffering is these beliefs creating craving or aversion, which results in discontent with whatever happens because we want it to be otherwise. The process of dismantling our belief structure is a road to the reduction of suffering and an acceptance of what is. Ultimately, this road leads to understanding that no-self is true self as you begin to appreciate that what you thought of as yourself is just the amalgamation of a bunch of false beliefs you've picked up over the course of your life. I think enlightenment is simply a state of contentment and equanimity with what is, that is achieved by removing all beliefs.

[prieveschl]

Thanks, I’ll have to give him a read. This concept of self and our our urgent obsession with the subjective experience is indeed a junk heap of ideas we’ve picked up along the way, or machines of reason and identity we’ve cobbled from the misguided cogs adopted in its construction or foisted upon us from others trying to make sense of their own jumbled notions of who they are. The more I ruminate on exactly who this self is - is it my consciousness, a figment of imagination, a device to escape entropy, a receptor pulling down from some universal wellspring, a support system designed to merely keep the flesh animated and alive, an adversary we concoct to challenge preconception and spur our continual evolution - the closer I approach a territory where the self no longer serves a purpose, at least not in the way I always thought it must, and that simply being is the most honest manifestation of this thing we call enlightenment. Being without a need to understand the self, to live in the vast unknowing, and truly be ok with that.