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@now is forever Definitely.

What do you mean? The scary thing is that it describes various things that I've been doing for years, unknowingly. The description is very no-bullshit, straight to the point, and with it, I can crank my things up to eleven. It scares me where it could lead me. I will sit with this terror and get acquainted with it. Then, we'll see.

@PsiloPutty Thank you for your kind words. What, specifically, do you find profound about the stories I shared?

I would like to share my story, which consists of three awakening experiences so far. I do not intend to keep a journal and I would like to invite discussion and ask for directions. Due to nature of my self-inquiry I am not committed to any spiritual tradition and know basics of very few ones, but I'm open to suggestions to what pursue next. This thread will contain three posts, as I would like to go in depth on each one and they may not be digestible in a one go. Currently, I'm intuitively feeling that a fourth awakening is coming and I think that remembering details of my previous ones will help it come along. For now, let's talk about my first awakening that happened 3 years ago, and some background. I was always smart. First, as a kid that did as little as possible to not get in trouble with parents and play videogames for the rest of the time. Then, as a teenager that would get hooked up on science and computing, pursuing career in mechanical engineering. I was raised in a reasonably wealthy family and by the time I was finishing my master's degree I had everything most people have by the time they are in their mid-40. A house, a car, a cat, and a reasonably well-paid job thanks to my family. And, of course - feeling absolutely crushed by life's miseries, barely holding it all together. I was having something of a year-off in which I was supposed to write my thesis, but instead of doing that I decided to check out philosophy. I was always admiring authorities in science, and philosophy was like its big daddy so of course I would get interested in that. Being a youtube junkie that I still am, I found The School of life channel and ran a crash course in art and philosophy. What got me really fascinated was existential philosophy, especially Martin Heidegger. He was advertised as the most obscure philosopher that talks about the most mundane things, and boy, how did I love riddles. My first awakening had two stages. First stage was while reading about existentialism as a whole on Stanford's encyclopedia of philosophy, and the second one was while reading Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time". Facts that I injected were not important in my awakening by themselves, but the process of opening myself to possibility. Transcending the point of view I had at the time. What is important is that I did not really try to grasp the logic this philosophy provides, but to accept it as it was given to me, and try to view "the real world" through its lens. A logical/rational person like me could do that only because I trusted that those philosophers were wiser than me and I was trying to connect with feelings I knew I had inside. I was trying to prove to myself that I am a human being, and not a robot which I saw as a root cause of unhappiness in my life. In the first stage, while reading broadly about existentialism, it induced severe feelings of loneliness, sadness and compassion towards other human beings. I remember looking at people focused on their business and feeling sorry for them for being "lost" in their "roles". I suddenly started cherishing simple things, like sunshine, or the wind. Breathing. At the same time, I started to doubt my material paradigm as I believed that I cannot simply be summed up as a story. I started seriously thinking about death, and having walks to the cemetery every few days to contemplate it. When I saw that something was going on with this existentialism thing, I finally decided to wrestle with Heidegger and thought to myself: "Damn, I read tensor calculus for fun, how hard can this whole "Being and Time" be?". Well, the book gave me a good fight and then knocked my Ego out for two weeks. The mainstream advice for anyone interested in the book is that you don't try to read it unless you have a Ph.D. in Philosophy. I was too determined to care at that point, so I read it in two languages to account for mistranslations, while watching Hubert Dreyfus' lectures on youtube. It took me several months to get through one third of the book, when my first awakening happened. It was a gradual process in which I saw how I construct reality. The book highlights the method of self-inquiry called Phenomenology that is used to map the inner territory of a being called Dasein. The being is defined as one that asks the question "What is being?", which is what the book tries to answer. I have been doing that out of pure curiosity for months, each day, every free minute until it hit me: "None of this is real, everything is me". It was a very nauseating feeling, very strange and profoundly beautiful. In everything I saw, I saw how I was in it. Everything was a reflection of myself - a book wouldn't be a book without me. I saw how "I" was constructed out of a "book", and the "book" was constructed out of "I". How "I" was dispersed in everything I saw, felt, smelled and touched. It was absolutely fascinating. Until, of course I understood that I can take ownership of the construction and I started to deconstruct what "I" didn't like. Funnily enough it was things I was the most proud of, like how I was attached to my house, but felt miserable for not earning it. How I loved my car, but felt fear of losing it. To disassociate from my body that I thought was too fat and didn't like. It felt so freeing that I cried. I got so carried away with this deconstruction that at one point I realized that once I knew how to do it, there was no coming back. I could not forget how to and I was in total control of everything. I could go all the way down into nothingness. And then it hit me: "A human is literally nothing and it is terrifying". "We run away from it and shove things into this bottomless pit without realizing it cannot be filled." "This is the misery of the human condition.". After days of fear, nausea, crying, laughter, ecstasy and love - the remnants of "I" decided that we cannot live this way. That this is too unsustainable and we have to close the pit. So it happened. In the midst of things, I reached out to my parents for help. First, they tried to fix me physically, when that showed not to be the problem - they sent me to therapy. Very pragmatic people, but hey - good call. I stayed with the therapist till this day and I'm very glad. What happened next is that I lost 16 kg over the next few years, changed my job to a better one, met my soon-to-be wife and graduated school at the top of my class. Ego at its best, trying to keep the pit closed. Overall: great ride - 10/10, would ride again So, what technically happened? What I learned a few years later is that I probably did a very intense Neti-Neti inquiry while being totally clueless. Ended up, probably, in the dark night of the soul and let the Ego take the wheel again to leave it. It grew back strong, but I knew that I could open the pit someday, which I did in the second awakening. I will report on it soon.

About chaos magic. Oh, my dearest friend, we are all equally insane. Some of us simply want to be exactly as insane as everybody else and some of us want to be insane in their own, authentic, way.

@now is forever Like I said - that book scares me. The things I could do to my mind with it are terrifying. I want to ground myself in public opinion. Make 'them' stop me by calling me insane for taking it seriously. Too bad that it's too late for that to work .

What do you mean? Book is static. Forum is dynamic. I guess that I think that by reacting to other people's thoughts I keep it more alive and vibrant. That is, of course, an unjustified assumption. I guess that I could try to write my thoughts in a book.

@now is forever I think that chaos magic is one of the things I want to discuss in a sensible way. Leo had always warned us from Ego's wanting to keep things private. I think that I will start a thread one day. I'm having a batchelor paery, so I guess I will be heading off for now. Many touching posts have been written since yesterday and I can't wait to respond ❤️♠️.

@now is forever beautiful song It always amazes me how songs I don't understand but find beautiful (via feelings) always turn out to have beautiful, deep lyrics.

Now you're suddenly talking on behalf of all (?) people. hmm. I figured as much. You really seem to have no idea what I'm talking about and I feel straw-maned by your every response. Have it your way. Good day.

Right, because all of a sudden I have a choice to do whatever I want and I am definitely not a part/whole of the unfolding . Free will definitely exists and we all do it not out of deep, deep, ignorance . Okay! Why is it so sickening though?

So, we need law to protect us from the problems that we created (toxic waste) by solving other problems we created (easier survival)? Not only that, but we also call law a problem that needs to be solved to become 'humane'. lol

Agreed. Change is continual and surrender is presence. Permanence is an illusion and clinging is egoic. Here comes a (tangent) question: Isn't change permanent? Isn't therefore presence the other face of ego? What is the difference in going either way?

I'm sorry for calling you silly. I just don't understand you. I think that we agree on that quote though. Yes. What I'm asking is: where does the need to change the unfolding come from? It's perfect. (I just realized that I could ask myself this very question)

I never said that it is a biological process. Yes, and it leads exactly nowhere and it has always been heading that way. The idea that any individual human, corporation, or government or a planet has any influence on it is just silly. This very notion of control over the process has been the curse of humanity from time immemorial. All problems that we're facing today were yesterdays' solutions. We're trapped in our collective monkey-mind as a fireman that ignorantly takes a flamethrower for an extinguisher. The cosmic irony is that we all know how it is going to end and we simply distract ourselves, chasing our own tail. Relax Leo, I'm not a problem to be solved. No, I don't. You're jumping the gun.

The same difference exists between a mirror and reflection. now i‘m confused about what you want to say. What does the mirror look like when you are looking away? When two people look into the same mirror, do they see the same face? Prediction you derive from a prophecy is nothing else than projection of your own ego. This is why Cassandra is called a complex.

The same difference exists between a mirror and reflection. That is why humans have two legs. To keep balance. Actually, it will. You just have to learn to find peace in it, as strange as it may seem.

So, it seems @Leo Gura that what is lost on me is your, hmm, fixation (?) on complexity of reality. I wouldn't say that we're any more complex as a collective organism than we were, lets say - 10000 years ago. Now, we have all the knowledge and all the names for various constructs and interactions, but the underlying principle is the same. We still have no clue what is going on, and we still try to control the outcome. The only change we have created is that instead of being lost in unconsciousness - we are lost in knowledge. Human race has not solved even a single problem. We have only renamed them, or moved them out of our field of view.

The difference may be the egoic need to 'control' outcomes. To me, prophecy is an infinite zoom stored as a static construct (such as a text, like in 'mystical experiences'). It has no use. Come to think of it - it just came to my mind that it can be a way to discharge the tension. Although it did not lessen it, but increased it. It works like an infinite mirror, a resonance chamber. Interesting. Oh, the chasm between emptiness and love. Are you sure that you are not too heavily relying on the body though? To me, emptiness and love are pretty close, actually.

Yeah, I totally 'get' it. It's a bodymind. It's been a mind>body only because of ignorance. I'm very aware that they come together and one affects the other and vice versa. Feelings color the sketches of thoughts. Crayons are picked so that the painting makes sense. It's not even that it is a bodymind, or mindbody. It's bmoidnyd. The mind keeps track of the time, but it doesn't know when is the 'right' time to keep track of the time . Everything, always happens 'now'. When the heart feels like it. And Now is Forever.

If the tension is what you call 'energy', then yes - definitely. What will happen if I won't? I've been on a quest of exploration for a past few years regarding the mind-body connection. To me, body is an extension of the mind that plays back-and forth with it. I'm at the point in which the mind is used not to control things, but to observe and cut unnecessary attachments so that the body can act freely and safely. I don't even feel like I 'control' the body any longer. I can also see the feedback loop between thoughts and emotions, so it is not that 'I' am the mind. It's more that I am something in which thoughts and feelings arise and my 'job' is to be present to feelings so that they do not get stored within the body or acted out mindlessly. For a long time I've been able to shift the 'tension' from the third eye and the crown down to throat, but in the past week or so - it had changed. Now, I can move it down to heart and below down to the root. When I focus on the breath, it is the most pleasant experience I have throughout the day. Sometimes, the energy 'shoots' through my limbs pleasantly. I can even 'freeze' it in-place to produce a semi-orgasmic state, but I'm not too well versed in that yet. It requires a lot of effort and tenses my muscles a lot. Especially around the chest. When I go about it, it becomes very intense and my breathing 'locks' on deep inhalation. Strange things I'm exploring these days.

@Leo Gura Your answer is very entertaining (sorry!), but you haven't answered what I feel to be the central question: I am not for, or against freedom. There is freedom in regulation and there is regulation in freedom. Even if:

Oh, that thread had kept me going for a whole week. One of the deepest hmm... 'things' yet. Very deep insights were produced there. I'm still very fond of it . Maybe you are a psychic of some sort? You really seem preoccupied with prophecies. Here's another thread about the 'tension': Does it ring any bells? Do you have any names for it that I can pursue? Any pointers?

@Leo Gura You have a good point here. My question is: what is the solution? Regulation is nothing else than creating a big ego to suppress a mass of small egos. If we need to check the small egos, then what checks the big ego? Are we wishing that these egos become occupied with each other and find a way to function? How is that any different from what we have right now?

Oh yes, I remember. I thought that you didn't like my answers back then . Come on, don't be shy . Many words, little sense. I died. I became acquainted with the Nothing. "I" fell off and came back different. Then fell off again. Then came back. It comes and goes all the time. Sometimes for seconds and sometimes for weeks. I can always see through it though. Here's the link to my thread, but the amount of awakenings had changed. I stopped counting at seven: