Actually, if you deeply analyze further, you will find that your points 2 through 6 all collapse into number 1, the fear of death. The very desire to remain alive in a body is the only true obstacle to enlightenment. This has been my personal experience. The total disappearance of this one fear (samskara, or deep imprint) through a rewiring of your inner software, which reflects as bliss in your hardware (body) results in eternal freedom, or jivan mukti, being liberated from suffering while alive. Then you continue to live and work as before, but with a pervasive awareness which you recognize as the real "you".
Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal  I've spent the past few years, releasing various attachments and aversions, but I've only recently realized that there was a shortcut, that most of the ego's attachments hinge on certain critical points, and when you let go of those, the whole stack collapses.
Some of the important ones I've found:
1) Fear of death/nonexistence
2) the experience of pleasure
3) the experience of suffering
4) experiencing itself, i.e. attachment to the "experiencer"
5) the attachment to attachment
6) attachment to the personal will / control
7) attachment to thinking, the pleasure of thinking, to thinking reinforcing the illusion of an "I" who thinks
These seem to be some of the core structures of the ego, which get projected onto various things "out there", but in the end they all come back to the same few things.
Are there any others that people have discovered to be fundamental to pulling the props underneath the ego? |