Mason Riggle

Where are the lines between 'intentional' and 'unintentional'? 'doing' and 'being'? 'voluntary' and 'involuntary'?

Who is? Is 'Alex' separate from 'you'? To say 'he is lost in the conceptual dualistic dream' is to be lost in the conceptual dualistic dream.

@Moksha perhaps you are missing that I only care 'rhetorically'. When a Guru asks, 'who is it that is seeking?', do you think he asks because he wants the answer?

"Any attempt to change how things are, is just more 'how things are'." - Me.

"The only way to escape the story is to realize who "You" actually are." ^this only happens, if that's how the story goes.

"Little you" can't realize itself as 'Big you', unless that's what 'Big you' does. There is, in fact, nothing that 'Little you' does, that 'Big you' isn't 'doing'. "Little you" can not 'help himself' do anything.

@Moksha "So, "Little you" can go meta" "Little you" is still bound to the story." What do you mean, 'bound to the story'? Because it seems to me like "Little you" can only 'go meta' if that's how the story goes (and Little you isn't writing the story)... which is what I've been saying all along.

Define "you". If there's a 'me' who will become more free, this is the same 'me' that is being referred to when I say "But can I cause either to happen any sooner than I will?". If there is no 'me', there is no 'me' who can 'become more free'. There is no 'me' who can 'realize itself as consciousness'.

I think precisely the amount that I do. To me, this is like saying, 'you grow hair too much'. Could I grow it any less? Who's to say how much 'hair growing' is 'too much'?

Yes, either of these things can happen. But can I cause either to happen any sooner than I will?

^this 'tip' may help me cope with potential problems in the future.. but I couldn't have discovered this before I did. Could I 'help myself' discover that 'reading self-help may help you cope with potential problems in the future.' any sooner than I discover this? "The shortcut will help me get to work faster." While this is true, I can not become aware of the shortcut any sooner than I become aware of it. The same is true for any 'shortcut' to this discovery. Imagine that you are looking at an image full of 'hidden objects', and you are looking for them. Can you find them sooner than you will find them? You can not... but more than that, you can't even 'look for them' any sooner than it occurs to you to look for them. Can you cause yourself to 'look for the hidden objects in the picture' any sooner than it occurs to you to? "Finding the hidden objects" occurs exactly when, and only when, and if and only if, it does, and there's nothing you can do to 'speed this up' or 'slow it down', or in fact, manipulate it in any way.

@Leo Gura yes I am. To the extent I 'do' anything, I do Everything.

@LastThursday thanks. This is what I thought.

"YOU ARE EXPERIENCING IT RIGHT NOW!" Am I doing that? Is 'Experiencing' something I'm 'doing'? Sure, just as much as I'm growing my hair right now. Growing my hair is happening right now. EXPERIENCING IT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!

The first problem here lies in the question 'how do we transcend duality?', because 'we' implies 'separateness' from 'something other than we', which is another duality. 'we' (or 'I' or 'you') can't transcend duality, so long as there is a 'we'. 'non-dual' means 1. No separation. Success and Failure are just stories (imaginary dualities). How can you know what a cup is in 'non-dual' terms? You can't. The 'cup' only exists as duality (something that is separate and 'described')- that which is the cup, and that which is 'not the cup'. Reality is 'non-dual'... but you can not experience 'non-dual' reality, because for there to be a 'you' separate from 'that which is not you', there is duality. Reality can only be 'known' or 'experienced' or 'described' or 'created' or 'seem like something, rather than nothing/everything' as duality.

The 'difference' is the illusion.

Paradox- A paradox, also known as an antinomy, is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically unacceptable conclusion. "This statement is false" is a paradoxical statement. If it's true, it's false. If it's false, it's true. One real life example is the paradox of 'self'. We might for example, say something like, 'there is no self'. When we look for the "I" that we feel like we are, we can reliably not find one. There is no 'self' that resides inside you somewhere. But when we ask, 'who is it that knows there is no self', or 'who is it that can look for a self and not find one?', we are entered into a paradox. This paradox is often turned on it's face, to become 'I am everything' or 'I am God', usually with the realization that there is a 'self', it's just not a separate 'self', and the paradox goes away. In your examples, I would refer to those as 'dualities', rather than paradoxes. What can be noticed about dualities, is that they are typically defined relative to each other. Light is just 'not dark', success is just 'not failure', life is just 'not death'. Recognizing that these 'dualities' are not actually 'two different things', but rather, a way to describe '1 thing' using relative (and often dual) terms, is a path towards transcending the dualities. I like the example of thinking about reality as a coffee cup, but imagine that all there is, is the coffee cup (there is nothing else). Now imagine trying to explain the coffee cup to someone without anything to compare it to. There is nothing that is 'not the coffee cup' which we can reference to describe it. But, through 'duality', we can describe it.. it has an inside and an outside. It's light in color, rather than dark. It's hard, rather than soft. Notice here that we could not describe the coffee cup just in terms of 'the inside of the cup' without any notion of what 'the outside of a coffee cup' is. Reality, which is 'infinite', can only 'seem like something' (it can't be described, even to itself), through 'duality'. Reality has to 'pretend' some arbitrary 'limits' or 'descriptions' or 'dualities', to 'know' itself. For Reality to 'seem like some finite something' (this vs that), it has to pretend it's not an infinite everything (1 thing).

A few things to consider: 1- Pleasure and Suffering are defined relative to each other. What is 'pleasurable'? It's that which is not 'suffering'. What is 'suffering'? It's that which is not pleasurable. We are really talking about the same thing. (Is 'up' anything other than 'the opposite of down'?) 2- Desiring Pleasure and Avoiding Suffering are also the same thing. 3- You always do exactly what you desire to do. (you desire that which you desire to desire, and avoid that which you desire to avoid.. both are 'what you desire to do') Consider the idea that you wouldn't even want to be happy, if 'being happy' wasn't already what you desired. If you desire to 'help others to suffer less', that is still selfish, because that is what YOU desired to do. 4- You are something that is happening, like a lightning bolt following the path of least resistance. Does the lightning take the 'easiest' path, or the 'least hard' path? Same thing. You always follow the path of your greatest desire, and not the path of 'that which you don't desire, or desire less'. Even if you do something you think you don't want to do (I don't want to go to work), recognize that you couldn't 'do what you think you don't want to do' unless you wanted to do that (I desire financial stability more than I don't want to go to work). It's hedonism all the way down.

I never have to try to 'be myself'.. I always just AM myself, without trying (whether 'I' = 'some individual locus of attention' or 'I' = 'Everything/God', doesn't matter). There's nothing for 'me' to do, except 'be myself', and I'm always doing that, effortlessly.

@BlackPhil Sure.. no reason not to put it out there.

This thread reminds me of something stupid/profound one of my old bosses used to say every time we had to unload a delivery truck and got to the last thing to be unloaded. - "We should have started with this one, we'd be done already."

Leo is Leo.. the same way a chair is a chair. You might as well ask why your chair has no grace... that's just not how chairs are. A chair's purpose is to be a chair. Leo's purpose is to be Leo. Don't look for a chair when you're feeling thirsty, and then wonder why the chair does not quench your thirst. Forget about Leo. "It's like a finger pointing away to the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger or you will miss all of the heavenly glory!" - Bruce Lee

To get a better grasp of the problem with understanding what's going on here, let's change your analogy a bit.. Let's say you are dreaming that you are playing a video game and asking the characters in your dream some question on some specific goal in that game... if you are asking the characters in your dream about how your dream world functions, it might not be too far fetched for those dream characters to assume you're still asleep.

@Kalo "..and they were alleging mostly that I was a Materialist, and that I'm somehow dogmatically opposed to the idea that mind might play some role in defining reality, or parts of it.. but that's just not true..." - Sam Harris

"There's a real problem with the word [God], because it shields the genuinely divisive doctrines and believers from criticism. If the God of the 25 percent is incredibly valuable, which it is; and it's actually worth realizing, which it is; and it's something we can talk about rationally, which it is; then calling it 'God' prevents you from criticizing all the divisive nonsense that comes with religion." - Sam Harris "Believing in transcendence is not the same thing as believing that you'll get virgins in paradise if you blow yourself up" - Sam Harris