BipolarGrowth

I think you are spot on except for this bit: “So to me it makes more sense thqt conciousness can assume the form of literal nothingness but it can also assume thr form of Infinite Imagination and infinite Mind.” Edit: Of course Leo beats me to this by 1 fucking minute while I’ve been typing out my response for some time lol. You say nothingness has form here. You say that consciousness (which is something) can be nothingness. Think man. That makes absolutely no sense. A form is something. A shape is something. The shape of consciousness changes constantly, but it does always have a shape nonetheless. If you’re in a box, the shape of consciousness is of a human being in the dark in a box. You also started talking about how consciousness cannot be nothingness as consciousness is something. You’re right. I’ve had the insight that this (existence) is nothing. This insight is essentially a word game and nothing else no matter how real it seemed to me, and it appears some others, at the time of the insight. Of course you can experience consciousness free from any beliefs or language used to describe it, and in this state it doesn’t really matter which label (something vs. nothing) you apply to it. The problem comes when you try to use tools like language or thought to describe that state. The tools simply cannot get the job done adequately. Go watch/practice Leo’s latest YouTube video if you want to understand this. It will get you into the state I’m referring to. Anyone arguing for the verifiable existence of nothingness, an experience of nothingness, or emptiness is clearly not using these words properly. Right now, we are having a discussion using the English language, so we have to be cognizant of that. We can’t use words in ways that are against their denotations and connotations and expect anyone to get value from that. The only time that the statement “this is nothing” is true is when the statement “this is something” is equally as true. This occurs in the state I referred to without beliefs, thoughts, labels, or anything else being used as a backstory or explanation of consciousness. As soon as you apply the backstory that we’re currently using to have this discussion, the only true thing to say is that there is always something and never nothing as far as we will ever be able to verify with our direct experience. When you experience what you interpret to be nothingness, there is always something, and that thing is experience. You cannot verify something without using some degree of experience, so there could be such a thing as nothingness. The problem is that no being in this reality or any reality will be able to verify nothingness. In conclusion, nothingness can only exist in our imagination, and even then, that thing that we are imagining is not nothingness. It’s the imagination of what we think nothingness might be like. In the past I’ve suggested on here that nonexistence or nothingness is actually the only place where truth can be found. This can be realized when you ask yourself the question “Is Truth static or is it always changing?” Jed McKenna argues that truth is that that does not change. This seems self-evident to many people. If this is correct, nonexistence is the perfect, unadulterated Truth for nothing does not change. There is nothing that can be changed when there is only nothing, but this is only ever a version of armchair philosophy rather than something that can be verified with direct experience. If your answer to the question above is that truth is always changing, then go no further. You’re already swimming in Truth. Consciousness is always changing, and it certainly exists as you are consciousness. Therefore, my ultimate conclusion is that the argument for consciousness being Truth wins as it can be armchair philosophized as well as experienced directly whereas true or total nothingness can never be experienced.

When you go to sleep at night, you often find yourself in dreams. In these dreams, most people will still have a human body. In waking reality, there is an unsubstantiated claim or story given by people that consciousness is somehow generated by the brain. The experts aren’t so sure, or at least they don’t have any solid evidence. Look up the “hard problem of consciousness” to understand how this is unsubstantiated. In the dream, you typically do not think along the same lines. If you were to lucid dream, you would certainly not think you were the dream body or somehow generated by the brain in your dream head. I say you, but I need to clarify exactly who you are. You are consciousness. Consciousness is the only constant you can find in all realities. In the dream, you are literally everything perceived in the dream. It’s all generated by your consciousness. We understand fully that everything created in our dreams comes entirely from us and is an extension of us. Surprisingly enough, there’s no solid argument against this being exactly the same case in waking reality. Your brain, body, and mind are all generated by consciousness in the same fashion consciousness generates the entire reality in dreams. Beyond your mind, body, and brain, you as consciousness generate this entire reality. This entire reality IS consciousness and nothing else. It’s the same way in a dream nothing is separate from you as consciousness. You as consciousness are the sole source for everything in the dream. No one thinks everyone in their dreams are conscious, separate entities once they’ve come back to the waking state. It’s the same in this reality. There’s absolutely no way you can actually be shown something outside of your consciousness. There will never ever be proof that other beings are conscious separately or outside of your consciousness. Even if you merged consciousness with another being in the waking state as a way to somehow prove the existence of another consciousness, guess what it would be? It would be fully engulfed in exactly one thing: you as consciousness or otherwise put your consciousness. You are the source of everything that exists in your consciousness, and your consciousness is the entirety of your universe and always will be. Nothing can ever exist outside of your consciousness. Existence relies completely on perception and consciousness to even be relevant. What is the difference between a fairytale land in a book, the black void people typically conceive of as nothingness or nonexistence, and a reality you imagine exists like heaven? They’re all just imagination. The only thing that’s real is what you can experience in this very moment. As soon as something exits consciousness, it exits existence. There’s no proof for something existing outside of consciousness, and there never will be because the most fundamental building block in any proof is, you guessed it, consciousness. Before using reason or logic or any other conceptual tool to prove something you use precisely one thing first: consciousness. In this way consciousness envelops anything one could conceive of as being outside of consciousness. Even if you and I are both conscious entities, we live in completely different “universes of consciousness.” Precisely, that is to say that one consciousness can never be shown another consciousness to exist without perceiving the other consciousness through the lens of the original consciousness. As soon as one consciousness comes into the other, the secondary consciousness immediately becomes an aspect of the primary consciousness. So if you were to completely merge your consciousness with mine, your consciousness would be held within my consciousness, and it would be the same for you if the process were done from your perspective. This is a clear mechanic of consciousness. We can never know if the person sitting across the lunch table from us is conscious. We can only assume one way or the other. Anything imagined to be separate from the perspective of the original consciousness will always just be one more aspect of the original consciousness. In this way, we are entirely alone as consciousness. We are not alone as human beings. There are plenty of humans walking around. You can clearly perceive that, but by the very nature of perception, consciousness cannot perceive another consciousness without it immediately becoming another aspect of itself. Consciousness cannot perceive another consciousness as some sort of separate thing. Once the “other” consciousness is viewed, it only exists as long as it is in contact with the primary consciousness - the point of perception, and it is only truly the primary consciousness the entire time. In this way, you can never truly share space with another consciousness. You cannot perceive another consciousness. Anything you perceive is just you. You are consciousness. Everything is you. Everything is consciousness. It will be this way for eternity. You as consciousness will likely visit innumerable dreamt up worlds that you’ve created. You’ll perceive yourself as some kind of avatar or character as far as we can tell. You’ll at first see all the rest of the characters in your dreamt up creation as separate from you, but in truth those dream characters are just as much you as your primary character is. They’re just characters held within consciousness. One, your primary character who you at first feel to live inside, simply exists in your consciousness more of the time than the others. Ultimately neither the other characters or your perceived primary character is you because you are the consciousness that permeates all aspects of the dream world including its laws of physics, characters, objects, and everything else. You aren’t the characters any more than you are the objects or the laws of motion that govern that reality. You are all aspects of that reality. You are all aspects of all realities. It matters not if your primary character runs into God or the Devil during his adventures in various realities. The only God is you. Your consciousness. The God perceived by your consciousness truly is a puny thing compared to you. He is completely enveloped by you and always will be. A reality can only exist within you. Something is only real to you if it is held within your consciousness. No realities exist outside of the one you are experiencing right now. This waking state planet Earth does not exist when you are in a dream. Your wife could tell you that the world still existed while you were asleep, but you have to see how this is exactly the same as if your dream wife told you the dream reality was there while you were asleep. It means nothing because you as consciousness were not there. That seems to be the pattern in what we can verify between both the waking state and dreams.

You keep many of the insights even after the trips are over. Yes, some won’t really make sense or apply to your current state of consciousness. The thing you gain is the insights that you keep. The ones that you retain relatively clear memory of can be very helpful. Meditators experience the same thing. If you realize a peak state during meditation, it typically does not last. Does that mean the peak state was a distraction? Not at all. I’d say lower or baseline states that don’t produce insights are the distraction. Certain trips can cause you to make lasting changes to your values, habits, and priorities as well. There are even studies that show psilocybin raises your openness trait by one standard deviation permanently. That is absolutely huge.

@aurum I don’t agree with this based on my experience. I’ve had multiple God realizations that did not directly address the topic of reincarnation whatsoever. Realizing you are God does not somehow answer all questions you might have. That is a separate experience typically.

Well, the obvious answer is to die. That’s the only way to truly verify whether reincarnation exists or not. Anyone telling you otherwise is bullshitting themselves and you.

I just shared this on another thread where someone was stating there is a physical world that exists outside of our consciousness. It’s a writing I did a week ago or so. It should answer your questions I’d think. Solving the mind-body problem by understanding dreams When you go to sleep at night, you often find yourself in dreams. In these dreams, most people will still have a human body. In waking reality, there is an unsubstantiated claim or story given by people that consciousness is somehow generated by the brain. The experts aren’t so sure, or at least they don’t have any solid evidence. Look up the “hard problem of consciousness” to understand how this is unsubstantiated. In the dream, you typically do not think along the same lines. If you were to lucid dream, you would certainly not think you were the dream body or somehow generated by the brain in your dream head. I say you, but I need to clarify exactly who you are. You are consciousness. Consciousness is the only constant you can find in all realities. In the dream, you are literally everything perceived in the dream. It’s all generated by your consciousness. We understand fully that everything created in our dreams comes entirely from us and is an extension of us. Surprisingly enough, there’s no solid argument against this being exactly the same case in waking reality. Your brain, body, and mind are all generated by consciousness in the same fashion consciousness generates the entire reality in dreams. Beyond your mind, body, and brain, you as consciousness generate this entire reality. This entire reality IS consciousness and nothing else. It’s the same way in a dream nothing is separate from you as consciousness. You as consciousness are the sole source for everything in the dream. No one thinks everyone in their dreams are conscious, separate entities once they’ve come back to the waking state. It’s the same in this reality. There’s absolutely no way you can actually be shown something outside of your consciousness. There will never ever be proof that other beings are conscious separately or outside of your consciousness. Even if you merged consciousness with another being in the waking state as a way to somehow prove the existence of another consciousness, guess what it would be? It would be fully engulfed in exactly one thing: you as consciousness or otherwise put your consciousness. You are the source of everything that exists in your consciousness, and your consciousness is the entirety of your universe and always will be. Nothing can ever exist outside of your consciousness. Existence relies completely on perception and consciousness to even be relevant. What is the difference between a fairytale land in a book, the black void people typically conceive of as nothingness or nonexistence, and a reality you imagine exists like heaven? They’re all just imagination. The only thing that’s real is what you can experience in this very moment. As soon as something exits consciousness, it exits existence. There’s no proof for something existing outside of consciousness, and there never will be because the most fundamental building block in any proof is, you guessed it, consciousness. Before using reason or logic or any other conceptual tool to prove something you use precisely one thing first: consciousness. Even if you and I are both conscious entities, we live in completely different “universes of consciousness.” Precisely, that is to say that one consciousness can never be shown another consciousness to exist without perceiving the other consciousness through the lens of the original consciousness. As soon as one consciousness comes into the other, the secondary consciousness immediately becomes an aspect of the primary consciousness. So if you were to completely merge your consciousness with mine, your consciousness would be held within my consciousness, and it would be the same for you if the process were done from your perspective. This is a clear mechanic of consciousness. We can never know if the person sitting across the lunch table from us is conscious. We can only assume one way or the other. Anything imagined to be separate from the perspective of the original consciousness will always just be one more aspect of the original consciousness. In this way, we are entirely alone as consciousness. We are not alone as human beings. There are plenty of humans walking around. You can clearly perceive that, but by the very nature of perception, consciousness cannot perceive another consciousness without it immediately becoming another aspect of itself. Consciousness cannot perceive another consciousness as some sort of separate thing. Once the “other” consciousness is viewed, it only exists as long as it is in contact with the primary consciousness - the point of perception, and it is only truly the primary consciousness the entire time. In this way, you can never truly share space with another consciousness. You cannot perceive another consciousness. Anything you perceive is just you. You are consciousness. Everything is you. Everything is consciousness. It will be this way for eternity. You as consciousness will likely visit innumerable dreamt up worlds that you’ve created. You’ll perceive yourself as some kind of avatar or character as far as we can tell. You’ll at first see all the rest of the characters in your dreamt up creation as separate from you, but in truth those dream characters are just as much you as your primary character is. They’re just characters held within consciousness. One, your primary character who you at first feel to live inside, simply exists in your consciousness more of the time than the others. Ultimately neither the other characters or your perceived primary character is you because you are the consciousness that permeates all aspects of the dream world including its laws of physics, characters, objects, and everything else. You aren’t the characters any more than you are the objects or the laws of motion that govern that reality. You are all aspects of that reality. You are all aspects of all realities. A reality can only exist within you. Something is only real to you if it is held within your consciousness. No realities exist outside of the one you are experiencing right now. This waking state planet Earth does not exist when you are in a dream. Your wife could tell you that the world still existed while you were asleep, but you have to see how this is exactly the same as if your dream wife told you the dream reality was there while you were asleep. It means nothing because you as consciousness were not there. That seems to be the pattern in what we can verify between both the waking state and dreams.

This writing I did the other day might help you understand. If you don’t read the rest, at least read this: A reality can only exist within you (consciousness). Something is only real to you if it is held within your consciousness. No realities exist outside of the one you are experiencing right now. This waking state planet Earth does not exist when you are in a dream. Your wife could tell you that the world still existed while you were asleep, but you have to see how this is exactly the same as if your dream wife told you the dream reality was there while you were asleep. It means nothing because you as consciousness were not there. That seems to be the pattern in what we can verify between both the waking state and dreams. Here’s the total writing: Solving the mind-body problem by understanding dreams When you go to sleep at night, you often find yourself in dreams. In these dreams, most people will still have a human body. In waking reality, there is an unsubstantiated claim or story given by people that consciousness is somehow generated by the brain. The experts aren’t so sure, or at least they don’t have any solid evidence. Look up the “hard problem of consciousness” to understand how this is unsubstantiated. In the dream, you typically do not think along the same lines. If you were to lucid dream, you would certainly not think you were the dream body or somehow generated by the brain in your dream head. I say you, but I need to clarify exactly who you are. You are consciousness. Consciousness is the only constant you can find in all realities. In the dream, you are literally everything perceived in the dream. It’s all generated by your consciousness. We understand fully that everything created in our dreams comes entirely from us and is an extension of us. Surprisingly enough, there’s no solid argument against this being exactly the same case in waking reality. Your brain, body, and mind are all generated by consciousness in the same fashion consciousness generates the entire reality in dreams. Beyond your mind, body, and brain, you as consciousness generate this entire reality. This entire reality IS consciousness and nothing else. It’s the same way in a dream nothing is separate from you as consciousness. You as consciousness are the sole source for everything in the dream. No one thinks everyone in their dreams are conscious, separate entities once they’ve come back to the waking state. It’s the same in this reality. There’s absolutely no way you can actually be shown something outside of your consciousness. There will never ever be proof that other beings are conscious separately or outside of your consciousness. Even if you merged consciousness with another being in the waking state as a way to somehow prove the existence of another consciousness, guess what it would be? It would be fully engulfed in exactly one thing: you as consciousness or otherwise put your consciousness. You are the source of everything that exists in your consciousness, and your consciousness is the entirety of your universe and always will be. Nothing can ever exist outside of your consciousness. Existence relies completely on perception and consciousness to even be relevant. What is the difference between a fairytale land in a book, the black void people typically conceive of as nothingness or nonexistence, and a reality you imagine exists like heaven? They’re all just imagination. The only thing that’s real is what you can experience in this very moment. As soon as something exits consciousness, it exits existence. There’s no proof for something existing outside of consciousness, and there never will be because the most fundamental building block in any proof is, you guessed it, consciousness. Before using reason or logic or any other conceptual tool to prove something you use precisely one thing first: consciousness. Even if you and I are both conscious entities, we live in completely different “universes of consciousness.” Precisely, that is to say that one consciousness can never be shown another consciousness to exist without perceiving the other consciousness through the lens of the original consciousness. As soon as one consciousness comes into the other, the secondary consciousness immediately becomes an aspect of the primary consciousness. So if you were to completely merge your consciousness with mine, your consciousness would be held within my consciousness, and it would be the same for you if the process were done from your perspective. This is a clear mechanic of consciousness. We can never know if the person sitting across the lunch table from us is conscious. We can only assume one way or the other. Anything imagined to be separate from the perspective of the original consciousness will always just be one more aspect of the original consciousness. In this way, we are entirely alone as consciousness. We are not alone as human beings. There are plenty of humans walking around. You can clearly perceive that, but by the very nature of perception, consciousness cannot perceive another consciousness without it immediately becoming another aspect of itself. Consciousness cannot perceive another consciousness as some sort of separate thing. Once the “other” consciousness is viewed, it only exists as long as it is in contact with the primary consciousness - the point of perception, and it is only truly the primary consciousness the entire time. In this way, you can never truly share space with another consciousness. You cannot perceive another consciousness. Anything you perceive is just you. You are consciousness. Everything is you. Everything is consciousness. It will be this way for eternity. You as consciousness will likely visit innumerable dreamt up worlds that you’ve created. You’ll perceive yourself as some kind of avatar or character as far as we can tell. You’ll at first see all the rest of the characters in your dreamt up creation as separate from you, but in truth those dream characters are just as much you as your primary character is. They’re just characters held within consciousness. One, your primary character who you at first feel to live inside, simply exists in your consciousness more of the time than the others. Ultimately neither the other characters or your perceived primary character is you because you are the consciousness that permeates all aspects of the dream world including its laws of physics, characters, objects, and everything else. You aren’t the characters any more than you are the objects or the laws of motion that govern that reality. You are all aspects of that reality. You are all aspects of all realities. A reality can only exist within you. Something is only real to you if it is held within your consciousness. No realities exist outside of the one you are experiencing right now. This waking state planet Earth does not exist when you are in a dream. Your wife could tell you that the world still existed while you were asleep, but you have to see how this is exactly the same as if your dream wife told you the dream reality was there while you were asleep. It means nothing because you as consciousness were not there. That seems to be the pattern in what we can verify between both the waking state and dreams.

@How to be wise isn’t Eckhart Tolle’s whole story built upon enlightenment occurring without a practice? He had one thought that effortlessly spiraled him into an awakening and a form of enlightenment. As far as I’m aware, he had absolutely no spiritual practices before that, and this self inquiry was not given to him by anyone else.

@SamueLSD well technically it’s 50%

You lay your head down at night. After about 20 minutes, you fall asleep. After some time, your brain goes into REM sleep. You find that you are no longer on planet Earth. You are in a dream world created by your own mind. You begin to acclimate to the different odd features of this reality. You watch movies. You enjoy artworks. You exercise. You live a rather normal life. Along your maturation process, at the age of 25, you hear that leading scientists have been able to determine the age of the dream universe. What a discovery! They say that the dream universe is 13.8 billion years old. You wake up back on Earth 30 minutes later as your wife makes a loud noise and disrupts your REM sleep. Is the dream universe still 13.8 billion years old (what the experts within the dream could verify)? Or was it 25 years old (what your direct experience can verify)? Or is it 30 minutes old (what others on Earth and clocks can verify)? Now, how old do you think our universe is?

All spiritual pursuits I’ve come across in the past seven years of really studying spirituality can be boiled down to humans developing methods to experience states of consciousness or experiences that are desired, if we are being honest with ourselves. To be short, people want everything other than suffering, and spirituality is potentially the most potent method we know of to escape suffering. It shows us the highest of highs possible, but it is ultimately manipulation of this reality to make it more palatable and pleasant. I use the word reality here to describe this thing we currently find ourselves in, so I will use the word reality to describe dreams as well as there is ultimately no fundamental difference between nighttime dreams and this reality on an existential level. It’s all just consciousness at play with itself generating appearances that feel most real when experienced in the home reality/dream. Why do I bring up dreams/the other realities you experience every night? I do so to present the possibility of viewing interacting with realities in a more purist way. If you were to take the spiritual person’s approach to the dream world, they would read some esoteric texts in the dream to teach themselves how to lucid dream, and then they would proceed to remove all things they didn’t like from the dream. The normal person’s approach would be to just go along with the dream/reality by its rules, enjoying simple pleasures whenever they can be found. Isn’t kind of the point of a nightmare to be scared? Sure, suffering in any reality isn’t pleasant, but isn’t it an integral part of the game? I think removing suffering only seems desirable from the limited perspective of one lifetime (at least that you have direct memory of) spent as a human or other living being on planet Earth. If you lived in a reality of constant parties, pleasure, and bliss and possessed the qualities of a full-fledged god, I think you would eventually want to add something else into the mix. Theoretically, in comes suffering and the idea to erase your memory when entering into a new life. Alan Watts actually has a good talk about this concept. I’ve embedded it. As another example, if you were to take a spiritual person’s approach to movies and literature (assuming the spiritual person were living in this movie or book), you would take away all conflict from the story as soon as possible. Where is the fun in that? How boring would that be? Now, of course, spiritual people aren’t the only people who to try to evade suffering, but it seems to be the highest order solution to the problem of suffering. The highest of spiritual masters have supposedly been able to transcend it altogether. In summary, spirituality is the biggest escapist mechanism humanity has ever found. Maybe we should just live with life as it is without trying to alter consciousness to present itself how we (our egos) want it. Ultimately, survival itself, in any reality, is the attempt to manipulate reality and bend it to your will. Maybe we should stop bending.

One of my ego’s greatest frustrations in life is caused by people not wanting to actually have a deep understanding of things. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a beer with your friends or watching a football game rather mindlessly, but don’t you want more? To have a conversation with most people about my deepest passion, I have to start with Consciousness 101. There are almost no people with an advanced understanding of what is actually happening. Even many people who pursue this or spirituality for their entire lives just end up caught up in groundless, speculative belief after belief. I was caught up in this for years. I still am to an extent as much as it benefits my human vessel and mind’s survival as I’ve naturally, of course, grown attached to the most consistent aspects of this current dreamstate. Understanding reality is a process of constant revision, editing, throwing out old beliefs, adding new ones, and eventually it evolves into experiencing reality devoid of belief entirely. Understanding as a word doesn’t even do what I’m talking about justice as understanding is just the attempt to put seemingly more developed layers of belief on top of others. What I’m really talking about here is the deconstruction of all ideas about reality. That is the “highest understanding” of reality one can develop. Even enlightenment, awakening, or literally coming in contact with that which is typically considered to be divine or otherworldly is just an illusion dreamt up by consciousness. I’ve had all of those things happen to me to varying degrees, and yes, they are fun. The problem is they aren’t any more true or false than a pothead staring at a bagel listlessly while stoned. It’s all really on the same level. There are no true elevated states of consciousness or low states of consciousness. There is just consciousness. There seem to be better or worse states of consciousness merely because one aligns more with your ego’s desires than the other or one experience is outlandish compared to your typical experience of reality. Sure, things like science or medicine are useful tools for us to live this dream reality as we desire, but we are still just dreaming. Tonight you may dream that you are in pixie mystical fairy land where all entities worship Joseph Stalin. In that reality, it behooves one to worship Stalin. In this reality, it behooves one to understand or at least use the gadgetry of science and medicine. At the end of the day, none of these experiences have any inherent meaning or higher-order purpose to them. No experience is above another in an absolute sense. The experience of seeing Jesus walk on water is, from the absolute perspective, just as meaningful as you killing a fruit fly to keep your home free from pests. Of course, these experiences have relative differences in meaning and perceived purpose. As far as what can be verified by direct experience, there is nothing outside of these different dreams we find ourselves in whether it be a dream at night or the dream you find yourself in while you are reading this. The only consistent thing you will find in any reality/dream is consciousness. When consciousness is not present, nothing is present. To exist is a function of consciousness. Try to show someone something without first using consciousness. You can’t do it. You may think there is a table in your dining room when you are in your bedroom, but there isn’t unless you have a video camera or other device operating that brings it into your consciousness. Now I know many of you are whining at this notion, but please realize that it is a BELIEF that your table exists in your dining room when you are not present rather than an EXPERIENCE. All that we really have is experience. Sure, this dreamstate follows relatively predictable patterns compared to some other dreamstates, but you don’t KNOW for all certainty that the table is there. Following the seemingly rational laws (logic and rationality are 100% human constructions btw) that most people believe govern our reality, the table could’ve been stolen, and thus your belief could be false. Let’s take it one step further. Once something leaves your specific bubble of experience, it no longer exists at all. That could be the planet Earth that you think is outside your house, your mother, etc. You also have absolutely no evidence based in direct experience that other consciousness/conscious entities exist other than yours/you. Finally, I’d like to make it a point that you don’t have consciousness. No beings HAVE consciousness. Consciousness has you and all beings or objects ever perceived. I’ve said phrases like “your consciousness” for the sake of maintaining a relative chance of simplicity in understanding for you. One last thing, the process of finding Truth is actually against survival. That is one reason why it is so rare for people to understand or experience Truth. To live and function successfully as a human being, you have to have countless beliefs. Real Truth at the most extreme level might look like sitting in a chair experiencing consciousness until you die and your body decays.

In my eyes, if there was still activity in his brain, this could’ve all been his subconscious mind at work. This would mean his experience was as real as a dream. Was this reality he experienced real? Yes, of course, but probably not in the way you think so. All things experienced by consciousness are equally real. From dreams to hallucinations to what humans tend to call reality, it’s all just consciousness fundamentally. He probably went to such a dark place due to his guilt if we are to take the subconscious expiation to be true. Is hell real? Sure. If it can be imagined by the human mind, it certainly has the full possibility to be experienced by consciousness. Hell might exist in dreams, bad trips, on Earth during events of immense suffering, or maybe even after death exactly as its described in Buddhism or Christianity. The problem with the after death hell is that it can likely never be verified with any credibility to other people.

@Thestarguitarist14 I’d argue that you can be in being and still have desires. They just no longer cause any suffering, and it’s no big deal if you can’t fulfill a desire in that state. Desire is one of the things, if not the primary thing, that causes human beings to act. Show me someone who does not act, and I’ll certainly believe you that you can not have desire. Even many Buddhas have the desire to return to the world in order to help others out of suffering. You can’t be a bodhisattva without the desire to help others.

@krockerman I think you have some good points about the relationship amongst desire, joy, and suffering, but I would argue the real fundamental root of joy and suffering is not desire but consciousness.

@Moksha can you name one of these cancer patients, or is this merely a seemingly plausible assumption you’ve made based on your beliefs about awakening? Are you always filled with joy like these cancer patients? Have you experienced this directly for yourself and permanently? Just trying to get more info to see if the stories of transcending suffering are true. I’ve experienced this before, but it only lasted a couple weeks during the longest experience.

@LastThursday I’m not really seeking an answer at this point. I’m not sure what you’re getting at with that. I’m expressing some frustration as well as doing some writing. It is a story of the mind, but even stories of the mind are just consciousness. I’m believing that there is the possibility of experiencing a permanent ego-less state, but that is just a story. The purpose of getting rid of the ego would be to avoid suffering permanently. You meditate to get rid of the ego and thus get rid of suffering. There is just consciousness as all of these things are just aspects of experience/consciousness. There really is no separation between ego and consciousness in truth, but you can certainly think and experience life as if they are separate things. The real question is what do you do experience with? What do you do the ego with? What does mental health exist within? What not only serves as the framework for all of these things but also permeates every aspect of them and can never be experienced separate from it? Consciousness.

How to get insights? A combination of psychedelics, meditation, and spiritual study. What is an insight? It is a sudden realization of what seems to be an unquestionable fact about reality. What is an example of an insight? After taking 5.87 grams of mushrooms, at the end of the trip, I had the insight in clear English that seemed to be a direct communication from God that I was better than Jesus Christ. Knowing my life, I could make several valid arguments to back up this insight, or I could follow conventional wisdom and thinking to convince myself that it is false. Once you have the insight, it’s really up to you to believe it or not. One fundamental part of insights is that they at first seem unquestionable. You’ll find it’s quite hard to convince yourself that your insights are false. What warning could you give me about insights? They are pleasurable distractions that allow you to potentially better understand reality at a conceptual level, but do not forget that reality is not a concept. Thus, they are ultimately distractions from the deepest truth that you cannot know but can only experience - consciousness experienced devoid of belief and stories to explain it.

@TrippyMindSubstance I like your points, but didn’t you just make an argument in favor of not bending reality when you used the word surrender?

@LastThursday there is the frustration as I currently inhabit the ego level of consciousness most of the time regardless of knowing the Truth and having experienced it. I don’t have the combination of mental health and will necessary to meditate myself to a constant experience of consciousness without the ego. There is one level and one truth in the same way that time doesn’t exist. Of course the idea of time exists, but time itself is nowhere to be found in direct experience. The idea that there are two levels exists and two truths exists and can seem quite valid just like the idea of time, but that is not found in direct experience. It is found in the illusion of the mind.

@Keyhole Not that I can verify that you’ve verified these things, but how much of this do you claim to have verified for yourself? Just curious.

The problem with your/Leo’s matrix example is that for the matrix to be real an implication is that you are real. You are part of the matrix. It’s only when you break out the matrix that the you does not exist. I like how Leo prioritizes direct experience, but you have to admit that direct experience has informed you of the existence of an ego, mind, and human body far more often than some state of Love or Infinite Consciousness all the time.

18 is the perfect age to make mistakes, so why not try to live life to its fullest if you have an opportunity?

Well, I will argue that this does not have to be a contradiction, in theory at least. Before I start, the chance of there actually being an enlightened nazi is of course slim. I had a deep awakening to God’s perspective on good and evil. According to my awakening, there is essentially no difference. A Buddhist monk that has this awakening would continue on doing what aligns with his past routine and beliefs. So he would probably drink some tea and meditate in a nondual state. The nazi who has awakened could very well go on killing Jews left and right knowing that from an absolute perspective it makes no difference either way. A nondual nazi might actually be the worst one you encounter, for if they had the same awakening into good and evil that I had, they could kill without remorse, fear, or guilt. Most spiritual people have a few awakenings and delude themselves into thinking that it’s all about peace and love. These are more human emotional states and ideals than they are Truth. Truth exists as much in humanly conceived evil as it does in humanly conceived good, but you won’t likely hear anyone here telling you that.

This gave me a realization just now. If we are to take direct experience as a source of truth, wouldn’t the direct experience of suffering be just as true and valid as experiences of infinite bliss, love, etc? I think spirituality as a whole is the human mind glorifying what is most desired. Everyone talks about the Truth in bliss and love, but who is there preaching about the Truth in the suffering? Who is rejoicing in the suffering? Don’t mistake me. Being a Buddha who does not experience unpleasant events as sources of suffering is not the same as rejoicing in the suffering. Maybe I should work on a post about the spiritual value of suffering.