Can someone help me out?

You seem to think objective insights are out there to be discovered by digesting paper and ink

Nowhere do I say this.

Why do you think you need to read any books in the first place?

Why read a book that teaches math? Why read a music theory book? I don't know man. Maybe you're capable of auto-generating infinite insight and re-discovering the Calculus by looking at the structure of a leaf but I'm certainly not.

By your logic, why continue reading anyone if it "becomes self-evidently clear that none of these people... has it figured out..."?

Separating the wheat from the chaff, man. There's gold everywhere but there's also a lot of Fool's gold and dog-shit.

If that is self-evident to you, then why are you giving people bad advice by telling them to read more people who haven't figured it out?

Just because someone doesn't have all the pieces to the puzzle doesn't meant they don't have some of the pieces.

How, in general, do you know there is anything left to be figured out without presuming to know what it is?

If you can look up at the stars at night and then think any Earthling has ever come anywhere close to having this thing figured out, I literally do not know what to say.

Continuing this kind of search is as foolhardy as a dogmatic attachment to any one teacher.

something something journey not the destination

I mean, do I really need to remind you that insights don't consist of mentation, much less words in books?

I suppose we'll have to disagree on this one.

I don't know about you but formulating insights into words and then sharing that insight with someone and seeing them really get it is one of the great joys of my life. The light turns on and then they feed the insight back to me through their own understanding and their own language and it's just an awesome feeling.

I know insights can be apprehended which are not linguistic but I never said that was the case with all insight. An image can evoke insight, a sound can evoke it, a feeling can evoke it.

Certainly, though, many of my insights have come from reading "words in books". I don't know why anybody would even read Eckhart or the Buddha or the Upanishads or any of that if they weren't searching for insight in the form of "words in books". Insight is the only reason I'd read those texts in the first place.

/r/awakened Thread