Category: philosophical counseling
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Awareness Is NOT An Object
What Is Awareness? Provisionally, we’ll say that awareness is that to which any objective experience (or object or arising) is appearing. How Is This To be Experientially Established? Explore the following: 0. Does awareness exist? Then consider the viveka (discrimination) teaching in order to establish, in addition to the presence or existence of awareness, the metaphysical priority of awareness.…
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Parmenides: Being Is; Non-being Is Not
I’d like to comment on the opening stanza of Francis Lucille’s fine philosophical translation of Parmenides’s poem “On Reality” (free PDF). Lucille: Now then, I [the Goddess tells Parmenides] will instruct you; hear what I say:Two paths are open to investigation.The first says: being is and nonbeing is not.It is the path of certainty, because…
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Awareness Clarified & The Yoga Of Awareness Unfolded
In Review 1. Awareness vis-a-vis objects 2. Case #1: Localized awareness 3. Case #2: Death 4. The Yoga of awareness expounded Awareness And Objects Really, the direct path teaching of Advaita Vedanta is so simple that it’s often misunderstood. It states: That’s it! We can go on: The Experiential Study Essentially, there are doubts or…
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Does A Sage Suffer Or Experience Pain?
Dear Sara (not her actual name), The Direct Path Teaching In A Nutshell In this teaching: 1. The only thing we’re investigating is the nature of direct experience. 2. For analytic purposes, we can see experiential understanding unfold “in three ways”: Difference? What’s the difference [you ask] between embracing any felt experience that arises vs…
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Why It’s Good To Be Careful During Psychological Investigations Of Alleged Egos
One reason to be especially careful when it comes to examining and exposing ego-selves is that you can invariably “reify” them. Whatever framework you learn can, in fact, lead you to believe that the names it includes refer to real entities. Take Internal Family Systems (IFS): suppose that you come to see that certain patterns…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 