Mason Riggle

Persistent illusions.

@softlyblossoming relaxing can happen. If you want to relax, there are ways to do that which can occur to you if they do. But if you don't want to relax, you can't cause yourself to want to.

@axiom there already isn't separation. When God awakens to itself, it's like God finding himself in a game of hide and seek and going, hahaha silly me.. how did I forget where I hid myself from myself... well, that was fun, shall we play again?

@axiom recognize that there is no way to change anything, everything is just changing. Any attempt to change what is occurring, is always just more 'what is already occurring'.

@axiom could 'God' be other than how it wants to be? Only if that's how it wants to be. One that is free to do exactly what it wants, is slave to what it wants.

@softlyblossoming there is literally nothing to for you to do, because there is no 'you' who 'does things'. What does a tree have to do in order to grow it's leaves? Nothing. It just has to be a tree, which it's already doing, without trying to.

@softlyblossoming is simpler than that. Being is always the case.

@softlyblossoming now, Leo might suggest the opposite, that 'you' are 'doing' everything, as God, and he'd be correct. But I defer to Alan Watts- "Am I doing all of this, or is all of this doing me?" I don't see a difference.

@softlyblossoming I might ask you.. 'How do you grow your hair?' Notice that 'your hair growing' is [part of] what you are.. it's not something 'you' are doing. It's Absolutely Effortless to 'be myself'. I never have to try to do it. I just am it. How hard are you trying to be you? How hard are you trying to think right now? How hard are you trying to grow your hair? Well, not at all. Thinking is happening. Hair is growing. You (however you define yourself) are something occurring, not something that 'does things'. Go ahead and try to stop being yourself.. notice that 'trying not to be yourself' is just more 'you being yourself'. You are always 'automatically' being yourself, without trying to. You can't stop doing it. Being is effortless, and it's the only thing you ever 'do'.

@softlyblossoming I don't. Nothing to do and no one to do it.

@SgtPepper even Ferris Bueller- "I could be the Walrus, I'd still have to bum rides off people" sounds strangely like, 'before Enlightenment, carry water, chop wood. After enlightenment, carry water, chop wood." or Eminem- 'Lose yourself in the moment'. or even Ace Ventura, Pet Detective- "One must forego the self to obtain total spiritual creaminess, and avoid the chewy chunks of degradation."

This seems backwards, or perhaps it's that it infers an imaginary duality. There is no you other than the totality of experience. It's direct.. you ARE that which is typically considered 'not you' (there is no 'me' and 'everything else', the totality of whatever there seems to be, is Me). No 'experiencer' on top of 'experience'. Again.. a duality. There is no 'creator' on top of 'creation'. Creation itself is what I AM.

@Nate0068 like a river, that sometimes is shaped in a way that it doesn't produce whirlpools, the mind can sometimes be shaped (the flow of an organisms thoughts.. the river) in such a way that it doesn't produce 'ego'. This is accomplished by changes in the way you think, meditation practice, psychedelics, etc..

@Nate0068 Nate.. Ego can not get rid of itself, because it doesn't exist. Think of ego like a whirlpool in a river.. can you take the whirlpool out of the river and show it to me? Why not? Because the 'whirlpool' doesn't exist. There is just 'what the river is doing'. 'ego' is just what happens when a whirlpool is shaped in such a way that it has the thought 'I am separate from the river, and I'm swirling myself'.

@Wilhelm44 it does seem possible. I suppose it would depend on lots and lots of variables. Would it have/develop a desire to survive? To 'preserve' it's ego? Such an AI Robot may have no fear of death, who knows? What would be it's 'highest' priority? An AI with an ego isn't a problem if that ego doesn't care about self preservation.

How is this different from how a brain functions?

@Someone here perhaps what is really being asked is, 'Would it be possible for a computer to develop an ego?'. Would an advanced AI, through some combination of memory, feedback loops, sensory functions, etc. begin to refer to itself as "I" with such conviction that it is indistinguishable from an organism which does the same? A computer which can reconfigure it's own programming in such a way that it represents to itself that there is some 'separate self' hiding inside itself somewhere who is 'doing' whatever it is that it does. What then?

I don't do anything. I am.

God always does what it Loves to.

Imaginary and real seem to be the same thing.

Considering the many facets of awakening, I think he has been enlightened to many of them. He doesn't always talk like some 'enlightened' people do, his maps aren't for everyone I suppose, but they worked well for me. He mostly operates from the materialist paradigm (within the context of the dream), which you and I are doing now, and that's not a problem for me. But just because he says, 'brains are thinking' doesn't mean he doesn't get that 'brains are thinking within the context of the dream'.

What's not to like? His works led to my first no-self awakening. Powerful stuff, the truth.

"You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm." - Sam Harris.

@machiavelli yes, but as God, you are them.. If everything is God, and you are that, what 'else' is there? There really isn't 'Gods Imagination'.. That's duality.. God/what God imagines There is just 'God pretending not to be'.