Anatta

'Quick question: if this concept has been known to buddhists for so long (Anatta, i believe), why dont buddhists quickly become enlightened like many of the truthstrike/ruthless truth members supposedly do? What takes them so long?'

Well there are various stages of enlightenment and I wouldn't want to tell you that after this your done and you will never have a bad thought or feel pain again. This kind of state is contrary to popular belief because people have been sold a lie of what enlightenment is. Check out what Jed Mckenna says about it.

After waking up here then you have to try and learn to live without actively trying to maintain a self image which lets face it, we have all spent our lives doing so it can be a little disorientating. After this realisation, the most important thing is facing up to the truth. You have to start to look honestly at the junk you have accumulated through your life and try and scythe out the remnants of that delusion.

The complexes of ego that were always there don't vanish overnight but you can see through them as illusory and certainly not be governed by them in the same way. If you identify in subtle ways, it soon becomes apparent and you can start to look at the roots of what is driving this identification. Also you can diffuse negativity before it even arises and the sense of attachment that you derive from outcomes no longer has any weight.

So if you were interested in buddhism and wished you were 'non attached' to things, that in itself is an attachment! No self is seeing through this paradox and this can be achieved by looking. By seeing this you are removing a core component of your delusion and the lynch pin of human dysfunction.

As for the Buddhists, they use meditation which I think is useful for developing concentration and chilling out but I don't really think it has quite as much potency as autolysis personally. That is just my opinion having used both.

The advantage I would give to seeing no self is that you start to pump your honesty to really high levels and that allows you to call yourself on your own bullshit in a very powerful way that is not available to you with a self, since the self image we were defending actually clouds our judgement and causes dishonest thinking by its very nature. It is actually a block to honesty as all of the hundreds of threads we have ever dealt with have focused on highlighting this dishonesty and that would bear testament to this very matter of fact.

Seeing as there are people who have meditated their whole lives and are still not free I think it certainly depends on what you are meditating on and whether you are looking honestly or deceiving yourself. This is why I think it can take some people so many years.  

What takes the time for Buddhists and any kind of seeker is scything the complexes of false thinking and judgements away that are hard wired in to our emotions etc... No one can really claim to undo this conditioning overnight, that would be absurd. This scything away of hubris is what takes the time. However the ability to see it honestly as it is and step out of the mindset of being affected by it... now that is a powerful thing and a head start, where you are not bogged down with misery , negativity and attachments while you are facing up to your own internal hubris.

What we are offering is not a golden ticket of enlightenment as such, we are simply a offering an obvious truth that anyone can discover for themselves which is freedom from this self image that drives suffering in human beings.  

So whilst this empirical methodology is a whole new take on enlightenment and we were guinea pigs as such do not think to yourself this is going to cure all your problems in a week, there are plenty of permanent benefits from this realisation of no self, but its real power is in allowing you to face up to your 'problems' with sincere honesty so you can address them and see how much truth is really in them.

Like many of us here you would probably realise it was all in the mind and there never was a problem, they were just fantasies derived from a self image.

Your big 'problems' with 'yourself' are just fantasies, want to see how far the rabbit hole goes?