Mason Riggle

@billiesimon the illusion is 'separation'. It's not that 'you' don't exist.. it's that there's no 'you' separate from that which is not you.

'They' are the mask. If you full drop your mask, there is no them.. it's all you.

@Ecocotton Solipsism is true, because it's just the idea that I can't know whether or not there is anything other my own perspective. Solipsism doesn't care if there are other perspectives or not.. it's all about what can be known. The Solipsist says, 'there's 1 thing I know for sure, and that is 'whatever my experience is', but I might be totally confused about what exactly that experience is. From my perspective, my perspective is the only one I can know for sure to exist. Solipsism does not say, 'I know my perspective is the only one that exists.' I could be dreaming Leo, and everything he says, and my family, and every experience I can remember.. I can't know, but it also doesn't seem to matter. It 'seems' like there are others, and that seems to be 'as real as it's ever gonna get'.

"Do not warship false idols" = "The Map is not The Territory" It's a metaphor. It means don't confuse 'concepts of God' with 'God'. Don't look at a map of the road and think it's the actual road.

Dreams are weird man, idk.. I once dreamt that my wife was murdered, and remember thinking in my dream, 'My god noooo! this must be a dream!', yet I didn't wake up until a bit later, after I had tried to track down the murderers in an angry rage.. I woke up out of breath and sweating. It was so real, even telling myself within the dream that I was dreaming didn't 'wake me up'.. I have long vivid dreams often, sometimes I journal them, but this one was, as you said, 'completely disproportionate to what i thought was possible to experience even in a dream'.. full range of emotion, smells, sounds, textures, conversations. Sometimes ya just gotta go WTF?

@Anirban657 you have to pay for the Life Purpose Course, but based on the quality of his other content, I bet it's worth every penny.

Your fear or 'anxiety' about what to do is driven by neurotic 'thoughts of the future'. Similarly, people who experience depression are nerotically focusing on 'thoughts of the past'.. by training yourself to keep your awareness in the present moment (mindfulness meditation), rather than focusing on thoughts of the future (or thoughts of the past), your fears will subside. Now, it's still important to think about the future. I might recommend Leo's life purpose course.. or looking into 'the Law of Attraction'.. which basically involves really figuring out what you want, because it seems (you can verify it for yourself, I can't prove it to you) that when you know what you want, the Universe conspires to make it happen.

@Barna ? "I have no other self than the totality of that which I am aware." - Alan Watts What is mistaken to be the experiencer of experience, is just more experience.

@Barna there is no 'the will'.. there is just 'what will'. I am cautiously curious about what will.. what will happen next? What will you say next? What will I think next? I have no idea until it happens... oh how exciting!

It's Always Now. The Truth (It) is Eternally (Always) this Moment (Now). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "It is always now. However much you feel you may need to plan for the future, to anticipate it, to mitigate risks, the reality of it is now. Now, this may sound trite, but it's the truth. It's not quite true as a matter of physics, in fact, there is no "now" when it comes to the entire universe… You can't talk of an event occurring simultaneously occurring here and at the same moment occurring in Andromeda. The truth is, "now" is not even well defined as a matter of neurology. Because we know that inputs to the brain come at different moments and that consciousness is built upon layers of inputs… whose timings have to be different. Our conscious awareness of the present moment is in some relevant sense already a memory. But as a matter of conscious experience, the reality of your life is always now. I think this is a liberating truth about the nature of the human mind. In fact, I think there is probably nothing more important to understand about your mind than that if you want to be happy in this world. The past is a memory. It's a thought arising in the present. The future is merely anticipated. It is another thought arising now. What we truly have is this moment. And this. And this…" - Sam Harris

"Gratitude is what makes what you have enough." ?

How much more 'free' can it get than to realize there's nothing to do? ? There's nothing for me to do.. ahhh liberation!!

What is mistaken to be the experiencer of experience is just more experience. What is mistaken to be the doer of what's being done is just more of what is already happening What is mistaken to be the thinker of thoughts is just more thought occurring now.

There once was a boy who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I'd like to see, is the I who knows me, when I know that I know that I know. -Alan Watts The experience of 'an experiencer' separate from the experience is just more experience, which is all there is.

@Eren Eeager great question. what do you mean by 'if it wants to?' well.. what if it doesn't want to? Who, or what, decides what 'it' wants? I think what we find when we contemplate these questions, is that Reality is Always how it Loves to be, the same way lightning always travels in the path of least resistance.. that's the way lightning ''wants' to go. When we use language like 'can if'.. it implies choice, but this is an illusion caused by language.. 'if it wants to' creates a duality between 'it' and 'what it wants', creating the illusion of 'choice'... creating the illusion of separate 'doer' of 'what's being done'. This is a limit of language. Consider... right now it seems that there are infinite things I could think about.. but the reality is, I can only think that which occurs for me to think. It doesn't really make sense to say, 'I am free to think anything I want'. It's more accurate to say, 'I can only think what I want to think, and nothing else'. This is how people make the leap from 'I suffer from thinking reality could/should be different than how it is' to 'I accept that reality is how it is, because it couldn't be any other way.' Reality must exist exactly how it LOVES to exist, otherwise it would exist some other way than it does.

@Breakingthewall just to expand on what you said, 'reality is real'.. yes, and circles are circular... but notice that 'circles' are, by definition, 'circular'. 'Reality' is, by definition, 'real', even if 'what reality is' is 'imaginary', it would still 'really' be imaginary. One can't escape 'the 'realness' of 'reality' by showing it to be 'illusion' or 'imaginary'. This is why I often ask, 'Is this forum real, or does it just seem real?' This honest answer to this question is, "it doesn't matter" or "there is no difference if I can't tell the difference"... or simply, "'real' and 'seeming to be real'(imaginary) are the same thing." This is a problem for logic and language, and we end up with people saying contradictory sounding things like 'reality is imaginary', to which some people will say, "of course! Real and imaginary are the same thing!" and others will say, "that makes no sense, because 'real' can not mean 'not real'." and here we go round and round..

@Flim let me put it this way.. Does it make a difference which it is?

Does it matter which it is?

Does it seem like there is stuff going on outside your perspective? Like, does it seem like there's a me, with internal thoughts, talking to you? My point is, it doesn't matter whether or not there actually is a me, with internal thoughts, that you are not aware of.. as long as it seems like there is. Either there's just your perspective, in which is seems like there are other perspectives, or there are actually other perspectives. If you can't tell which it is (which you can't) then it doesn't matter which it is. Does this forum exist anywhere when you're aware of it? It doesn't matter, you see?

@Javfly33 really stubborn, or imaginarily stubborn?

That's what I said. Imaginarily Real. Really Imaginary.

That's what I said.. Imaginarily real.

Saying reality is 'imaginary/real' makes more sense than thinking some imaginary person is 'really confused'. (an imaginary person could be imaginarily confused, or a real person can be really confused). That's like suggesting a person in my dream is having strange thoughts. "I know [Adeptus] is just a character in my dream, but he is really thinking some strange thoughts, and I should convince other characters in my dream of this".

@Inliytened1 if a difference doesn't 'matter'.. then what difference does it make?

because I'm a 'materialist/idealist'... I have no qualms about suggesting that reality is imaginary... and it's imaginarily real.