tsuki

@now is forever Man, you question is awesome and I would love to answer it, but I have to get back to work. I will get back to you later on today.

What I refer to has two facets. Let me describe one of them to you in terms of what I understood from your experience. There is a certain 'mechanical', 'automatic', 'empty' and 'dead' quality to existence as perceived through your newly discovered state of consciousness. The 'life' aspect of it comes from recognition that it is in fact you. It has always been that way, but you weren't paying attention. The feelings and experiences are as dead by themselves as you saw them, but they aren't normally like that at all. Normally, they are vibrant and alive. It doesn't make them any less real than the ones you saw under the hood. Do not mistake it for an achievement of conscious behavior. You were simply allowed to peek behind the curtain. Life/death deemed you harmless enough to trust you with this knowledge. What I gained from this experience is the feeling of reassurance that life will take care of itself whether I like it or not. That consciousness is a tiny fragment of me that I identify with. That tries to take reign over the whole of existence. This it the root cause of anxiety - overidentification with conscious behavior. Being humbled by the dead nature of life is a very potent cure.

Have you ever discovered in your direct experience that life and death are a single, never ending phenomenon? They are a concept in the traditional sense of decaying of the physical body, but there is another, more profound sense that can be directly observed.

Netflix.

@Steph30 As you start to examine your assumptions, you will discover that there is no ground to the claim that reality is material. The key point here is that nobody has ever claimed that. You assumed that out of blue and forgot that assumption. Materialism is a very useful paradigm for exploring reality, but it is just a story that we tell ourselves to forget things. We need to forget in order to act. We forget that we don't know and that we don't understand reality. It's just too much. From your first person perspective, there is no basis to claim that anything caused any other thing. Any causality is a feeling, or a hunch. It just obviously looks that way. There are different kinds of ways to describe obviousness and science has good (practical) standards. These are just that - standards for saying how much looking/investigating is too much. Obviousness and causality is a way of saying to yourself: enough is enough. I'm not looking any deeper. As you go deeper and deeper into assumptions, you will discover that there is no basis for claiming anything. That we are fundamentally ignorant of what reality is. We make up stories and forget that we made them up. The forgetting of the origin of stories is reification of reality. Reality becomes that. This is why we say that reality is an illusion. Not that there is no reality, but that there is nothing more real than what you see. There is nothing to fall back to when you come out of an illusion. You transcend illusions by calling things reality. There is no ultimate reality that underlies everything. It is all you. Reality is illusion. The perfect, infinitely deep and flawless illusion. I hope that answers your questions and even if they are valid and understandable - I can't honestly answer them.

Not caring for survival does not imply inability to survive. It does also not imply doing things that lessen the probability of your survival because you don't care. Not caring for your survival is to get rid of the notion of survival. Animals don't care for survival. They simply are until they aren't. It does not mean that animals do not know that they will die if they won't do certain things. They can't help but do certain things and us humans call this survival. Self awareness in this case is the absolute trust in your innate nature. In the fact that you can handle life automatically, without your conscious attention. That both your consciousness and unconsciousness work in union for you. The you in this case is not this particular body, but the whole ecosystem. Killing you means feeding a lion. You are not afraid of being food for a lion. You are simply afraid when you see a lion and you trust your fear to flee. You can also be afraid without seeing a lion and trusting your fear by being vigilant. It is not to call yourself stupid or anxious for fearing needlessly.

There is and this is the point. In my ignorant opinion, religious scriptures are not attempts to establish morality, but to critique it. They are riddles to be solved and in doing so, you solve yourself. There is no way to be compassionate towards the murderer, the victim and yourself at the same time. Not unless you recognize that you are all one.

So, now you're angry at yourself for being wrong by being wrong at all? Why does it matter to be right?

It may sound simple, but why don't you do an one hour break after your session and start over? Gradually decreasing the interval between sessions? This way your mind gets to rest from resting and you get your two hours. (Actually: this is just your mind wanting both things at the same time )

From the way you write your plea for help, I get the feeling that you don't get what lying and evil is about. Have you ever tried to be truly evil and selfish? Cunning, manipulative, lying and stealing? Killing maybe? You should try that some time. It won't be fun, but it can teach you something. It teaches you that you can get used to it to the point of thinking that it's right. You think that you're right right now, don't you? Right is the disease of the world. Stop being right and start being happy. Right does not make happy. Right makes bitter. Now grit your teeth and get yourself a sober girlfriend. You can lie to her. She'll be happy. That feeling is not a disgust for lying. It's disgust for being wrong. You're not.

@Ether You could try to make your negative thoughts into something beneficial. There are philosophies that seem negative, but when properly understood are actually quite powerful. What kind of negative thoughts do you experience?

That's how we all operate. We interpret other people's words to our liking (or dislikng). I'm not an expert on sociopaths, nor on Manson, though. Just watched a documentary about him and it was framed in a way that he brainwashed his 'family' with LSD. I agree about the discussion of his devilry though. I'm not a fan of calling enlightened people zen devils, as I don't see myself as competent in judging other's usefulness to society. From the limited knowledge I acquired about him, he was as much of a product of society, as any of us. I can see the reason why he may have turned against it.

Did we have a committee that voted on this that I missed? Since he seems to have never been convicted of killing a person himself, I think that his followers interpreted his words however they pleased. When you put a black hole among violent people, all kinds of of violent things may happen. He really seems to see through himself, but he seems to not see through others. I could feel that as a drive for isolation.

It is a template for spiritual development unconsciously conveyed through literature and art throughout the ages. It is not a method to self-actualize, but to self-reflect upon your self-actualization.

Very interesting. I have only recently became awake to this self-referential aspect of reality. It may be worthwhile to read some of his works to deepen it, but I believe that it's fundamentally inexpressible through language. No matter how many nested layers of self-reference you employ, it is lost on people that try to find the world meaningful. Allan Watts always stresses the importance of discipline in spiritual work. Your realization lays barren as long as you are not capable of expressing it. You do not practice your craft to earn, but to yield. Sometimes your craft is giving death like in Moore's case. There is obviously a huge difference between me and Moore, so even if I realized his message - there is still value in learning his craft.

@littleBIG It seems like you're progressing. Meditation has no benefits. Since now you have some spare time while you're sitting and meditating with no benefits, you could go ahead and ask that question for other areas of life. For example: What is the benefit of living? What is the benefit of dying?

This is the subtle difference between being grateful and being grateful for... Welcome home, friend.

Language is an expression of human expression. Language is the expression's self-awareness. Looking for language in expression is like looking for 'I' in yourself.

A child becomes an adult by being taught that it musn't be unruly. An adult becomes a seeker by telling himself that his mind musn't be unruly. One cannot rid oneself of unruliness. Ones unruliness is necessarily unruly. It does not submit to anything. It gets to play whether you like it, or not. Reconciliation is the path to transcendence. One can only solve himself by solving all problems. By seeing that having problems is not a problem. It's play.

I was raised as an Atheist and I always asked various religious people these questions: Why are you so sure that your God is the correct God? What God would you believe in if you were born in the rain forest? What if each time that you pray to the wrong God, you make the true God madder and madder at you? At one point I realized that this advice may be applied to my atheistic upbringing and I started to question it as well. This insight is what led me into spirituality. I hope that this perspective will calm your mind @Cara. There is no need to fear hell. Fear itself is hell.

Enlightenment is... I don't know. I am... I don't know. Since there is only one 'I don't know', then perhaps I am enlightened? ?

Not trying to claim that I know high level spiritual truths, but I have something to add. Humans are the environment that they destroy. Humans are the planet. Our destruction of the planet is the result of our never-ending drive to solve problems. To see the problem in the destruction of the environment is a manifestation of our excessive need for solving problems. Nobody has ever solved a single problem. We have only renamed them, or hid them from ourselves.

When I saw that there is no meaning whatsoever I saw that having meaning is meaningless. It came to me that the only thing worth doing with your spare time is to meditate. So I did. I grew like a tree. A tree has no problems to solve. When you have no problems, a mind that seeks problems is a problem. The world without problems is meaningless. The meaningless world has no problems.

Death is the only solution to life. It is true. What is questionably true is whether life needs solving. Trees need no meaning to live. Trees have no problems to solve. You have gathered momentum throughout your whole life by trying to solve things. Now, no things need solving and yet - you keep on going. You look for a solution for having no problems. When everything is truly meaningless, stopping yourself is meaningless as well. Just keep going. There is no reason to stop and there is no reason to go. Do you need a reason to enjoy life? Do you need a reason to dance? What is the reason for having a reason?

You're welcome friend. It's okay to blow up. It's okay to break down. It's okay to feel lost. It's okay to feel. It's okay.