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@winterknight Useless question coming through.. There is often a discussion/debate about whether the ground of being is Emptiness (as Buddhist describe it) or Awareness (how Advaitans describe) and some even say this Awareness is empty. I have an understanding of Awareness being the background. Do you have any thoughts on what you understand to be Emptiness?

@winterknight Remember my 'wtf is all this?' moments? Why do those occur ? Is it that in that moment i am dis-identified with my ego a little, and hence am close to the true Self, and that Self doesnt really know "objects".. and thats why suddenly the existence itself looks bizarre and unfamiliar ?

@winterknight Sorry I am going to ask again what exactly you mean by "there is no body-mind" . Let me know if the following understanding is somewhat correct regarding this statement: from the vantage point of the Self, there is no body-mind. From the vantage point of body-minds, there are other body-minds. The point of view of the Self is the absolute view and technically the only valid one because the Self is only true subject in all body-minds ..and in that sense it is accurate to say there is no body-mind. I ask this for the following reason. I saw the same thing said in all traditions. That after the enlightenment, there is a process of letting it realign the body-mind with the Truth. Adyashanti talks about it in his book "end of your world" where he mentions how in the years following his enlightenment he was still in the process of realigning all parts of his body-mind with the Truth. He still had karmic tendencies giving room for the ego to re-emerge, though not fully. What do you make of it?

@winterknight Lets say your body mind dies in an accident next day. What happens then? Would another body mind appear in the Self that you are? Would that body mind be able to talk about the Self the way your body mind is on this thread? Would that body mind again has to go through years of self-inquiry to realize its the Self?

@winterknight Do you know of the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures? Which stage do you find yourself to be?

@winterknight I dont know if you have noticed the patterns in my questions, but i am trying to get a hold of a self-inquiry method/question that works for me and that i can carry into my work-life. My concerns are very practical. Ramana's 'who am i' doesnt quite work, at least the way i have understood and tried it. I think you were right about Rupert Spira's method of asking 'who is aware'. Sometimes it can work but mostly it is just the ego answering 'i am aware'. AS i have been looking into pre-cooked self-inquiry questions to find out which one's best for me, something else happened on the side, which inadvertently might have shown me the way. Before i describe that, let me just repeat what something i have mentioned before. Every once in a while I get 'wtf is all this?!' moments where everything i am usually sure about falls away. "who are all these people?! Why is time running?! Where is all this?!" etc. It all looks made up. But i dont know what to do with this, and then come back to normal life with this uncertainty about everything pushed back to background. Let me call these moments simple wtf-moments for reference. A few days ago as I was doing self-inquiry going to sleep, I was led into the following line of questioning: In wtf-moments i know for certain that i am actually not sure about anything perceptions and especially thoughts tell me. But i am still certain about one thing, the IS-ness of present moment. Another way of putting it, there is absolutely certainty that there is awareness, and it is aware of itself. Now, if I am not really certain about anything in life, how come thoughts seem to be certain about everything about everything? The example of naming a bird 'bird' and thinking you know it comes to mind. The same phenomena is happening with everything. I really dont know anything(as so explicitly revealed by wtf-moments), but thoughts pretend to do. And ultimately, i know that i dont know what this "I" is, but i happily accept thoughts by this I or about this I. So since then, with the conviction of not knowing anything of wtf-moments, when i get a bunch of thoughts, i compared their level of certainty to IS-ness of the current moment. And i quickly discover thoughts dont stand a chance. I stay with what i know for sure, that IS-ness is.. Or sometimes, that I am, whatever this is. This is like extending wtf-moments to more of life and discarding things i am not absolutely certain about. This has been working. Thoughts get cleared out wholesale. Or even when they are there, i dont believe them as much. After it started working, i occurred to me that i might have landed back on self-inquiry in my own way. I am essentially doing 'who these thoughts arise to' but perhaps in a different way, with the aid of wtf-moments. To describe how this process feels, the analogy that ramana gave looks applicable: that when the sun rises, you dont need candles anymore. The absolute certainty of IS-ness seems to be the sun. In comparison to it, everything looks flimsy and can be discarded. Am I on the right path or is it another trap?

@winterknight What should i do with thoughts related to planning and deciding in work? I can dissolve them by self-inquiry but i actually need planning etc for work purposes and those thoughts are inherently around I-me and have to be kinda random and jumpy (as opposed to pointed thoughts at solving a particular problem).

@winterknight 1-Rupert Spira says being aware of being aware is what we call "I" . Is this true (relatively or absolutely) ? 2-So he goes on to suggest using 'am I aware?' as a replacement for 'who am i' for the direct path of self inquiry. The purpose is to be aware of being aware. This proposition is attractive because being aware of being aware feels much clearer an instruction than following the I-thought which often is not clear what it is in current experience. Do you think this is viable alternative to 'who am I?' ?

You have mentioned the importance of psychoanalytic therapy etc for the seeker. I'm torn in trying to determine whether I should stay in my current career, as I though I would since forever, or change directions completely. Do you think this is something a therapy would be able to help? I'm in Seattle area. Who should I contact and what should I say?

Hi @Leo Gura I really liked the Sponge analogy in your most recent video. It seems to combine many other analogies i had previously heard into one. I am trying to integrate your stuff with what I usually hear from other Advaita Teachers. I have two questions: 1- You said that awareness is 'technically nothing'. It is kind of that background in which the Sponge, the substance of perception is immersed. And ego is nothing but the negative space, the bubble. But does this background space (and hence the bubble) has an "I-AM-ness" to it? And is that I-AMness of the bubble that gets mistakenly identified with a perception (like body-mind) and becomes ego? Is I-Am-ness the same as self-awareness? Or are you saying that the background space is 'more nothing' than that. It doesn't even have an IAMness. Could you please comment on the IAMness of the awareness/background. It would complete the analogy! 2- To understand the analogy by a concrete example.. are you saying that the colors--the walls of one particular bubble and hence piece of the sponge-- are self aware? If the 3- If the space that separates the walls of the holes is absolutely nothing, then why is there a hole at all? Doesnt a 'nothing space' between two objects mean no-space at all?

@winterknight From the mind's perspective, is the world destroyed and created anew every moment? That is, is being (of objects) a verb? Is the world a noun or a verb (from minds perspective, since you have said from Self's perspective world doesnt quite exist in the first place)

@winterknight Is it necessary to sink mind into Self through the 'who am I' ? Or by following the I-thought to its soruce? Gary Weber in his book suggests trying out different questions and finding the one that works for you. “Who am I?”, “Where am I?”, “When am I?”, “What is doing this asana?”, “What hears?”, “What feels these sensations?”, etc 'Who am i' often has a strong intellectual component for me and it distracts away from the work I am doing and i find myself looking at nonduality videos in no time. Sometimes what seems to work for me is going to the '(non)experience of being aware of being aware', as Rupert Spira puts it. Or as i mentioned earlier, 'what is constant in the background' and 'what is this Now' also work sometimes. These questions do not follow the I-thought as such so i wonder whether the I-though remains in the background and sinking of the mind is a mere illusion.

Sorry, I do not quite share your view of the problem of interpretation. I feel it is a very scientific question. Different interpretations would agree on some experiments but would differ on others . It is a different question whether or not we can carry out those experiments with the current technology. And of course they differ in their theoretical implications as well..Which is going to be very important in any formulation of quantum gravity.

As long as the theory you're choosing does not make predictions that have been proved wrong. It's a choice up to that point. Also, saying scientists 'believe' in a theory is misleading. Sure, as humans they have their biases. But what they actually do in this context is, try to prove or disprove a theory. In the process to prove a theory you have to tentatively 'believe' in the theory. As in, "Y would happen if X were true". To derive Y you first have to tentatively assume X to be true. It is not the same as ideological or religious beliefs. I give you an example. A lot of physicists "believed" in supersymmetry.. that is they used supersymmetry to derive many predictions. Now that none of those predictions were confirmed by LHC, they dont "believe" in supersymmetry as much.

1- Taking your analogy, how can I ever find/locate the I-am and stop? Because whatever I can find is not the I-am by definition. What does happen though is, in trying to find/locate the I-am, and failing to do so (scanning the whole body-mind-world and then knowing its nowhere) a cessation of sorts is arrived. It's more like just giving up and BEING. I dont know whether i am being a particular thing, i just know that i am being. Is this what you mean by 'fell away of itself'? 2- What is the difference between looking for the "I" and BEING the "I" ?

@winterknight 1- you said Can you please elaborate on the last part "When that inquiry falls away of itself" ? What does that mean really?

@winterknight In the famous buddhist meditation guide book, The Mind Illuminated, the authors say that advanced meditators experience the mind-body-world as a series discrete frames and not as one continuous happening. As in, the experience appears 'on the screen' one moment at a time, like in the attached image. Is it the same with you?

@winterknight It is very tempting to self-inquire while going to sleep (on the bed), because, well, you are relaxed and eyes are closed ..but also it stops other thoughts which makes me fall asleep. I can 'let go' while falling asleep more than any other time of the day because i literally have nothing else to do. So i can sink pretty deep (before i actually fall asleep) But it leads to a very restless, erratic sleep as if i am half awake the whole time. But worse, i often wake up in the middle, sometimes 2 or 3 times, with existential thoughts/feelings running around. So i dont really feel rested the next day. When i fall asleep watching netflix or something i have a better sleep and usually directly wake up in the morning. What would you recommend? Should i self inquire while going to sleep ?

@winterknight I added more questions before you got to answer You answered first one. can you please answer the others. Thanks!

@winterknight Does enlightenment only answer 'who am I' , or does it also 'answer' (satisfy the curiosity) what i like to call "what is this all about!? Wtf is going on!? ' ?

@winterknight 1- Sometimes when I am looking for the "I", and can clearly see that I am not the body, thought etc.. i arrive at a weird situation because THEN it feels like the only "I" that is here is the one looking for the "I", aka the meditator. So there is an "I" as long as I am looking for it, because I, the looker, is it. So if I stop looking then there is no "I". I dont know where to go next? 2- In my daily life, as i continue the self-inquiry, how can i think the thoughts i need for my work and still inquire into 'who am i'? I can do one or the other 3- You say that self-inquiry leads to a I-free state and then we are to just abide there, right? But how do I know when to stop? Because even after the I-free state arrives, I can ask, 'who is experiencing this' ? Or is it that such a question wont arise naturally in an I-free state?

@winterknight Seekers in early stage like myself often fall into the trap of confusing Yoganidra for abiding in the Self. Ramana spoke about this trap. I suspect what @Ero has described above might be it. Could you please speak to how one can differentiate between the two?

Tell me if the following analogy gets a little close to what you said about even illusion being an illusion: There is a spiritual tradition called the headless way . People dont notice that in their panorama of present experience, their own head is actually not there. In my direct experience, there is nothing where I assume my head to be. Once you notice this, you also notice that even the illusion of head was not there. It was something you just assumed and went along with. Just never occurred you to look at this way that the head is actually not there. So you notice that even the illusion of head wasnt there.

@winterknight Thanks a lot dude. Your answers have been mighty useful! Enjoy the peace! Could I bother you in future with a PM if I got a question?

Ok great, because that was going to be my next question. As i notice the changeless, timeless Reality in the background of the Now, mind starts sinking and a general peace arrives. Should I stay there or should i ask 'who is experiencing this'? There is no "I" in that state, unless i bring it up by asking a question like that.