LastThursday

You're making an assumption that your consciousness is 'located' in your body - and by using mental gymnastics you're assuming that it could be 'located' in a different body given the right circumstances. But it's the other way around. Your body and and all the other bodies are 'located' within consciousness.

One purpose of judgements is to hold the ego together. It's one of the ego's survival mechanisms. In order for the ego to survive it has to pit itself against everything else external to it. One way it does this is by constantly comparing itself with other egos in the form of judgements. The ego sets up a false battle that it always wins. But it's literally life and death for the ego. For every comparison there's usually an unspoken counterpoint to the judgement. Here's a few I made up: "I don't eat that sort of food, it's digusting." The unspoken part of the comparison being: "The food I eat is the best sort of food, and so I'm virtuous." "I would never give money to a beggar, they should just find a job." The other side might be: "I have a job because I'm hard working and motivated. I would never let myself be degraded by begging." And so on. For the ego to lose a battle (when we ourselves are being judged), is a slow death.

It's good that you have the contrast between weekdays and weekends. It helps you learn what makes you motivated and gives you direction: having a routine. Without the weekend downtime, you wouldn't have realised that having a routine was beneficial to you. By the way, you also need downtime. Maybe you are not naturally a very regimented person, so at weekends you get your "freedom" back - enjoy it. Enjoy the contrast between the weekends and the weekdays. You could also use the weekends to work out why they make you feel bad. Why are you externally driven? Could you be internally driven? What would that mean? Do you need some external force to organise your time and your life? Some questions to go through.

I would say that's exactly right. Consciousness doesn't need an owner or observer - but it does have an inherent nature: consciousness is aware of itself. In that way it is able to manifest an ego. But strip away the illusory observer and you have Enlightenment. But whether you have stripped away the observer or not, consciousness is still aware of itself.

The mind is just an appearance like a red apple or the sound of a bell ringing. It's all occuring within consciousness. More accurately: consciousness forms itself into red apples, ringing bells and minds.

Chill bro don't worry about it. Having a mind is overrated. Embrace The Everpresent Now. Let the nothingness engulf you until you disappear.

Why don't you ask Him directly? Or at least ask your conception of Him. Then you will have your answer. God is whatever you are currently thinking god is. You cannot escape that. For as long as you use the word "God" you are in concept land. Maybe there's a way out? You could try and distil some sort of essence of "God" by cutting out anything extraneous. So God could be Awareness or Being or Existence. My point is, to even begin to answer your question you need to be very clear about what "God" is. And for "God" to be something you have to set up an equivalence relationship with a bunch of other things which are "Not God". Is God a supernatural male? So is God equivalent to some parts of reality, no parts of reality or all of reality? My personal favourite is the last one. In which case God is definitely not a "He" who "Feels".

@Derrida I'm totally with you. Don't believe other people's BS until you've validated it for yourself. Note I said "believe" not "dismiss". You shouldn't dismiss anything: it might just be true. There is a difference between the two. In fact you shouldn't believe your own BS either - but that's a lot harder to validate - maybe even impossible for some things. Even if you have validated something for yourself, you should still be ready to drop it if something better comes along. Lastly, be sceptical of your own scepticism!

It's funny how when you tug at a thread the whole fabric moves. I'd say do some deep contemplation about the causes of your addictions (as well as cutting off distractions regularly). Once you're satisfied that you've got to the root of each cause, actually do something proactive about it. Do small things at first and then when you're confident do bolder things. And watch your life change dramatically.

That your addictions are a product of your circumstances (I'm guessing here): Easy access to material that over stimulates your reward centres A possible lack of contact and opportunities to meet the opposite sex An under-stimulating hum-drum work/home environment you need release from Perhaps a lack of control you feel in your day to day life. In other words, the bigger picture of why you do what you do. Cutting off major distractions is definitely beneficial. But you'll have to do it constantly to fight against your circumstances.

Just an observation: Where does thought end and action begin? Could it be in the boundary between the two that our sense of control and free will lies? But could it also be that thought and action have the same source and are therefore related siblings, but one doesn't cause the other? In which case our free will and control must also spring from the original source (like a third sibling)?

What Leo says ^^^^ Imagine you have two friends, one is concious, the other a zombie. You decide to try and work which is which. You watch them for many weeks, but still you can't tell, they behave in very similar ways. Frustrated you start asking them questions. "Are you a zombie?", "No! How dare you!". All the questions you ask come to no avail. You can't tell the difference. You finally come to the realisation that you're going about it the wrong way. No matter how you interact with your two friends, it is always appearing in your conciousness awareness. The appearance and behaviour of your friends is always being interpreted and conceived by you. There's no way around this. Even if you could see through their eyes, it would still be your conscious awareness. There's no way to know if they're concious or not. You can only tell that you are concious. But it gets worse, because you yourself are being interpreted and conceived as well (by your ego)! Consciouness doesn't need YOU. YOU are the Zombie.

Because this solipsism is a total dead end. Why do you assume that she's not having an experience? The only thing worh doing under that worldview is blow ones head off with a shotgun. You missed the point of my question. I'm not talking about solipsism or assumption. I'm talking about direct evidence in your experience. You have no idea whether other people are having experiences, you're just guessing. It may not feel or seem like you're guessing, but you are. You're using similarity to yourself to infer that other people are the same as you. Inference is just thoughts.

That I'm looking forward to, who needs Absolute Truth?

@AngeliteOf course not. Your experience is yours. Mine is mine. I can only experience your "Him" through the words you're writing and my own awareness.

I like to surrender to awareness and just let it unfold through me and try not to resist it. But it's difficult.

You only have awareness, the whole universe is "inside" of it. There's no room left for "outside". God is not "outside" of you, s/he/it is "inside" your awareness. But the awareness doesn't belong to you, not really. You belong to awareness - it is its own end. I believe the same as you, the only thing I can fully trust is awareness.

I do appreciate your answer But I have no way of knowing if it's true or not until I experience it directly for myself.

How would you know if I've read your article or not? You don't. That is my point, it's just a thought you're having about me. If you've experienced the absolute in different ways, I would say that it all happened in your direct experience, and so it existed for you.

How do you know she's having an "experience"? Does she tell you? Or is this just a thought you're having?

@SpiritualAwakening I see where you're coming from. It depends on your viewpoint. Are thoughts primary or is direct experience primary? You know which side I'm on. The three biggest problems I have with relying on thought are: Why can I not just think of something now and it just materialises in front of me right now? Why wait? Why doesn't it work 100% of the time? Where do thoughts actually come from? Are you really in control of them? Where do thoughts go? Why is it thoughts can be completely random and ridiculous and bizarre? How can they be trusted in any way?

@SpiritualAwakening how do you know that "something" exists? The only way to know is to "experience" or become aware of it directly. Thoughts are not good enough. I can easily think about a teapot in orbit around the moon - does it exist - no. You can't trust your thoughts. What happens when you are not directly experiencing "grandma"? She becomes a thought. You actually have no idea if she's making herself dinner, watching TV, or has actually died. You can think about those things - yes - but you don't actually know, you can't trust those thoughts. She has actually stopped existing. Maybe you object and say: "but she can phone you to see how you are". Yes. Then she would come back into existence - because you are having a direct experience of her (not just thoughts). So where does grandma go when she's not existing? Nowhere. She literally dissolves into nothingness. It's not so ridiculous. Where do subatomic particles go when they're not being observed? They have a Shrodinger wave function, which is just a probability distribution (i.e. they become mind stuff, thought). It's only when they manifest in your direct awareness that they become real and exist.

@Consilience I think you understand it well.

To use your analogy I think awareness is loaded "on demand". So nothing exists until you become aware of it. Your grandma doesn't exist until you see her again. Until that happens she's just some random thoughts in your mind. This is not so weird, if something is the same as nothing. Something can come from nothing. Also, your grandma is a concept. The reality of your grandma is that she is a complicated experience in your awareness, which you somehow recognise and then label as "grandma".

@dimitri a dog is a dog on many different levels. It's like a cake with different layers: Nothing/infinity Pure non-duality God's imagination/dream Concepts and dividing up the world (duality, objects and so on) Raw perceptions and experiences and the present moment Thoughts, memories Language and concepts and categorisation (animal, mammal, friend etc) That's just a very rough (conceptual) outline. A dog exists on all those levels.