Mason Riggle

If randomness is freedom, then it's the same type of freedom as not being in control.. it's random. Where's the freedom?

@Someone here I get that, but anyone presented with compelling evidence will helplessly change their beliflefs.. what is it about the evidence that isn't compelling??

I don't quite understand why people are so immune to the idea that there is no free will. It's so elegant, simple, and perfect. So many here look for Truth and then deny it when it's staring them point blank in the face.

@SQAAD as I said, there are plenty of experiences more pleasurable than meth. Im fortunate to have experienced so many. So in comparison, meth wasn't so special. I did it in the vein of the reporter, intentionally to know for myself. It's like, if you're regularly a bull rider, the thrill of sky diving might not be as intense as it would be for a librarian.

@Wilhelm44 no problem. I should mention too, with heroin, it's doubly insidious, because the withdrawals can be excruciating, and taking more heroin stops the withdrawals.. so it's both the cause of, and the cure for the sickness. It's a catch 22 of the worst kind. A double bind.

@Wilhelm44 yes that.. and it's just a really good feeling, especially if you have chronic pain, because that goes away. Like Leo said, people who use it do so to actively avoid facing their shadows. It's excellent for that purpose.

@Wilhelm44 oh absolutely. My first kiss. Falling in love. Watching my children being born. Tantric orgasms. Rock concerts on LSD.. the list goes on and on..

@eggopm3 i wouldn't recommend trying even once unless you're sure that you don't have access to it, or that you have a really strong resistance to addiction.

@Tim R I haven't done both at the same time.. separate occasions. Meth is intense.. makes you feel like superman.. glowing and radiant, lots of energy at first.. then it's gross.. you feel grimy, clammy, sleep deprived etc.. Heroin is as described.. like melting into a full body warm hug.. it's wonderful.. too wonderful.

@SQAAD dumb and brave. I've tried both Meth and Heroin. (I'll try just about anything once) Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous. Like nicotine.. super hard to quit. Don't do it.

"There's no little small ego controlling the actions of the person or being." @blessedlion1993 who is controlling the little small ego? Some even smaller ego? Ego doesn't 'do things' any more than a tree 'does things'. 'Doing' is an illusion.. a trick of language... What is that rock doing? It's sitting there.. Oh, the rock is doing that?? Like trees, or rocks, ego is something that occurs sometimes.. being how it will.. but not doing.

Any attempt to change what is occurring is just more of what is already occurring.

Non-dual vs. Dual understanding. "I am God" seems perfectly fine, when read through a 'non-dual' lens. (of course you are, everything is!) "I am God" seems blasphemous to those who imagine they are separate from God.

@DocWatts reality is exactly how it seems to be, until it seems otherwise, in which case, it's still exactly how it seems to be.

“Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly. He had figured out that a single hour on the skeet-shooting range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as much as eleven-times-seventeen years. “I think you’re crazy,” was the way Clevinger had responded to Dunbar’s discovery. “Who wants to know?” Dunbar answered. “I mean it,” Clevinger insisted. “Who cares?” Dunbar answered. “I really do. I’ll even go as far as to concede that life seems longer i—“ “—is longer i—“ “—is longer—IS longer? All right, is longer if it’s filled with periods of boredom and discomfort, b—“ “Guess how fast?” Dunbar said suddenly. “Huh?” “They go,” Dunbar explained. “Who?” “Years.” “Years?” “Years,” said Dunbar. “Years, years, years.” “Do you know how long a year takes when it’s going away?” Dunbar asked Clevinger. “This long.” He snapped his fingers. “A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you’re an old man.” “Old?” asked Clevinger with surprise. “What are you talking about?” “Old.” “I’m not old.” “You’re inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow time down?” Dunbar was almost angry when he finished. “Well, maybe it is true,” Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it’s to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?” “I do,” Dunbar told him. “Why?” Clevinger asked. “What else is there?” ― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

@Spideymon77 The way I define 'ego' is- imaginary separation. It's Oneness, pretending to be twoness. Ego 'exists' the same way a whirlpool 'exists' in a river.. that is to say.. it doesn't exist 'separate from' the river. You can't take a whirlpool out of a river and show it to me.. the 'whirlpool' isn't a static thing.. it's literally 'what the river is doing sometimes'... in this same sense, your 'ego' is 'what your organism is doing when that's what it does'. The ego can 'come and go' like whirlpools in a river.. Whirlpools can exist in such a way that they carve out the riverbed, growing bigger and deeper, or in such a way as to erode the rocks and riverbed to where it disappears itself completely.. but there is no actual 'whirlpool', which exists 'separate from' the river that 'does things'. The same is true for ego. It doesn't 'do anything' other than 'be itself'.. existing how it does when it does. The way 'ego' (what an organism is doing) can 'dissolve itself' is very similar to how a whirlpool (what the river is doing) might erode the riverbed in such a way as to dissolve itself. The shape, size, etc. of the whirlpool is entirely dictated by the river, and is never 'the cause of how it itself is shaped' other than indirectly as caused by the entire river. The river sometimes 'whirlpools' here and there, and this 'particular shape of the river occurring' will in turn shape the river in such a way that it no longer 'whirlpools', or maybe it continues. But none of that is 'up to the whirlpool', because there is no 'whirlpool', you see? There is just the river going along how it will. (you can expand this analogy to 'the river' also, and get that 'the river' didn't 'cause itself to be how it is' any more than 'the whirlpool' caused itself to be how it is... 'the river' doesn't 'exist' separate from it's environment either. You can't take a river out of the valley and show it to me. There is no 'river' other than 'what the rocks and water are doing' when they are shaped a certain way.. rivers come and go.. the river may be shaped in such a way as to carve out the Grand Canyon, or perhaps the river erodes some sandstone, changes course and completely dries up.) The takeaway is that all of these distinctions.. 'ego', 'whirlpool', 'river' are all arbitrary separations.. there is no 'whirlpool' which exists separate from what the whole river is doing, which isn't separate from what the landscape is doing, which isn't separate from what the planet is doing, which isn't separate from what the Universe is doing. It's all ONE system, being how it will. It's this imaginary separation between 'ego' and 'that which is not ego', which does not exist, which creates 'ego'. When this imaginary separation is dispelled (when the 'whirlpool' is shaped such a way that it recognized it's own illusory nature).. poof!.. the border between 'whirlpool' and 'that which is not whirlpool' goes away. If, for instance, instead of swirling and making a lot of bubbles and whirlpooling, rivers produced 'thoughts'.. one thought it might produce is 'I am doing this. I am causing myself to be how I am' and this would be the rivers 'ego'..

@r0ckyreed I don't disagree with anything you said. My take on it is that it doesn't matter how Reality is, only how it SEEMS (which from my perspective, the only one I have, is how it IS, until it seems to be some other way). And it seems like there are others to 'me', when there seems to be a me, and not like that when there doesn't.

How do you know there are other perceptual bubbles even beyond your imagination? Because that's how you imagine it to be? Notice that all of your 'evidence' for 'objective reality' only exists subjectively, and not 'objectively'. You say, 'this is how the world appears to me, so that's how it must be.' (it seems like there are other people with their own perceptions, etc. so there must be), but this is a mistake. What there really is.. is the 'appearance'.. the 'seeming' that there are other perceptual bubbles.

Notice that anything you consider to be 'real' actually only 'appears to be real' or 'seems to be real'. This includes any 'proof' or 'evidence' that something you consider to be real is real. 'Waking vs Dream' makes a nice neat analogy.. when you are lost in a dream, you don't know you're lost in a dream, and so it SEEMS real. Consider how you might discover, while dreaming, that you were dreaming? You would have to become aware that you were dreaming, which is 'to be awake'. How do you know you won't 'wake up' in 5 minutes from now to some 'more real' reality, where this reality is just a dream? Well.. you don't. But get that it doesn't matter. All that 'matters' is what 'seems real'. If your dog dies in your dream.. it really matters within the dream.. because the dream seems real.. but when you wake up from the dream, who does it 'matter to' that a dream dog dream died? Not you, not the dog. Not even the dream dog. The only thing that matters, is whatever SEEMS real at the time it seems that way. The Truth is -It Is Always Now. It (Everything, whatever there 'really is') Is (Seems to be) Always (Eternally) Now (This Moment).

Is this forum, this conversation right now.. real or illusory? If you can't tell.. then it doesn't matter. (if the difference makes no difference to you, then there is effectively no difference).

@iboughtleosbooklist no self doesn't mean no Leo. The organism Leo can make claims and know things. It's just that there's no separate 'self' hiding inside the organism Leo somewhere who 'does things'. The ego is an illusion. The organism Leo does what it does automatically.. it grows hair, and beats it's heart, and thinks thoughts, and makes claims, and remembers things, and makes deciscions, and knows things, and imagines ego.. but it does these things 'as it will'. Perfectly out of control, as you say. Is Leo thinking his own thoughts? Organism Leo is thinking thoughts.. Ego Leo is not.. Ego Leo is just more thought that organism Leo is identifying as, or at times, letting go of.

@Tovius it can be noticed directly.

@Vibroverse how does your mind create your dreams at night? "Reality is Imaginary" is a metaphor.. reality is SIMILAR TO a dream. The Dream of Life is like (similar to, but not the same as) the dream you have at night.. except that [the dream of Reality] is infinitely more engrossing. It's like, if you made a home movie, you could do okay, but you'd be able to tell it was 'just a movie' when you watched it (think, a finite human having a dream)... but compare that to a professional movie producer, who makes movies so convincing, that when you sit in the theatre and watch it, you can actually become so engrossed in the movie, you forget that you are sitting in a theatre watching a movie (think Infinite Mind's dream).. God is Infinitely skilled at creating a dream SOOOOO believable, that you/God forget it's just a dream.

When you have a dream about a concert, and the characters in your dream are at a concert... is this dream about people at a concert 'evidence' that 'you are sharing a perceptual bubble with bubbles of the dream characters'?