Osaid

No, but it loses the distinctions you imagine about it. You could say it loses all of its "borders." I can still perceive things that are far away, which I think constitutes 3D perception.

Nothing changes physically, it is more like a recontextualization. You don't gain or lose anything, but your mind simply stops limiting reality through its projections. It is subtractive in nature, because it is a removal of a false identity. It is a deceptively simple shift in perception, but the implications of it go very deeply. There is no contradiction between your current state and infinite love, you are just imagining otherwise. The infinite love you experienced was probably similar in nature to what I am talking about, but it only occurred during a very specific psychedelic experience, which probably involved a very heavy body load and all sorts of grandiose metaphysical thoughts I assume. It is a mistake to conflate the symptoms of that experience as if it is inherent to infinite love. Any fear involved, if it is not about some kind of immediate physical threat, is ego. Fear is simply a desire to avoid something. If the thing you are avoiding is in past or future, that is ego, because only the ego is afflicted by past and future. Yes, I have a body. Yes, I sleep. But experientially, there is no "I" experiencing any of that, I only say "I" for the sake of communication.

You can permanently dissolve the ego through self-inquiry. Once you truly realize why there cannot be a "self" which exists inside of experience, the ego immediately and permanently dissolves itself. You can't think about yourself ever again, because you realize you could never do that in the first place. It is a binary recognition that you cannot imagine yourself. There are many ways to go about doing self-inquiry, but it is useful to question your experience of past and future, and the "you" that experiences the past and future. The main point of self-inquiry is to question the entity you call "yourself" until you realize why it cannot exist. Once you realize that, you never engage with it again. It's like realizing that Santa Claus doesn't exist, there is no point in imagining Santa Claus afterwards.

Yes, my imagination is actually much more rich and fantastical now because I don't constrain it with my identity. I don't assume things about it and how it relates to me. I just don't practically use it to imagine myself anymore. I think this ability to imagine without constraint is what makes you "feel like a kid again." It's exactly like that Spongebob episode with the box lol. Previously, imagination is mostly seen as a tool for survival, but right now it's like this magical ethereal thing that just generates perceptions out of nothing. It's like playing a video game in my head. I still use it for survival, but I don't use it to make existential assumptions. When you use imagination to make existential assumptions, it shrinks and limits reality, and it also shrinks your ability to imagine things, because your imagination itself is part of existential reality too.

Right. It's because your imagination wasn't as caught up in your identity. You have less memories about yourself as a kid, because you didn't live as long and so you experienced "less time." Identity accumulates over time if you have an ego, because the ego exists in time. It's like looking at a tree and thinking "I've seen thousands of trees in my lifetime" VS. "wow, a tree." As a kid, you didn't have as many ideas about "how the world is." It was basically endless exploration and learning, but now as an adult you "know everything."

No. The ego is as functional as Santa Claus.

"non-dual way of thinking" is a hilarious oxymoron You can like art made by someone you don't like, in the same way that you can like pizza made by someone you don't like. If you don't want to eat pizza made by them because it gives them money which they are using to support themselves to buy weapons or harm other people, then you make that decision. There is no moral code to follow here other than just following what actually exists consequentially; there is just looking at what your actions produce and then deciding what you want to do based on that.

The ego mind desperately looking for an identity to latch on to, bewildered by the new metaphysics of its experience.

How blissful is believing that you are Jesus?

What is there to handle? Does it matter how your mind describes reality? Why do you micromanage that? What is the point? It is just mind. It comes and goes like the wind. It says nothing and returns to nothing. Reality can't be thought. Physicality can't be thought. Taste can't be thought. Sight can't be thought. Why would you want any of it to be thought? Why would you want your experience to become a thought? Why think about it?

Rephrased: What is beyond the absolute? Leo would say, many more degrees of consciousness. Any enlightened person would say, nothing.

Enlightenment = everything/experience/existence Humans have the capability to imagine that they are not "everything/experience/existence." They have the capability to imagine themselves as something they are not, this is what an identity is. This imagination/identity itself is also part of "everything/experience/existence" by necessity. Being an "enlightened person" is realizing "oh im not the thing inside my imagination." But also, at the same time, your imagination did not change anything metaphysically, it is the very thing enlightenment is "made up of." "Unenlightenment" is a human invention through imagination. It is specifically the human capacity to entangle your identity inside of your imagination. When someone untangles themselves from their imagination, you point to them and say "that person is enlightened!" because they are now acting in accordance with what they actually are, not what they imagine that they are. Hope that made some sense.

Same, good chat.

We're going in circles. You do you.

Sounds good.

Yes, it could. There is no "I" claiming to be enlightened. I am simply just communicating with you using words. All words existentially point to one thing, which is your experience. If I gave you an answer, would it really be an answer? What is my answer going to be made of, experientially? Is it really going to explain things, or is it just going to make you imagine a new narrative on top of your experience? By the way, I totally get the sentiment. What the fuck is this? Do you think this feeling will go away once you come up with a smart answer?

Up to you. I already gave you solid heartfelt advice before, I think you get stuck in your head a lot, and you seem to kind of enjoy that. I think you would just turn my answers into more mental masturbation. It's fine, but if I feel like my answer isn't gonna help you then I won't engage.

Yes, I am enlightened.

Enlightenment is not: - A logical or metaphysical conclusion, like "this does not exist, therefore I am this." - Something that is "higher" or "lower" - Dualistic - A specific state or experience or quality - A logical or intellectual puzzle to solve - Philosophy - Something which becomes deeper or refined over time Enlightenment is: - One, singular, ever-present, undivided, etc. - Being aware, not being aware of logic > As an example, logic is not awareness, however, you can be aware of logic. > Enlightenment is the same as being aware of sound, touch, taste, etc. It is experiential, not a logical formula. - The immediate relinquishing of all metaphysical questions about experience, reality, and yourself. - Subtractive. Undefined. Not a thing. "Nothing." - Becoming aware (not through logic, but by looking at logic) that there is no "you", or any "things", at all. - Outside of past and future - What you always are, even if you imagine otherwise

I could define it in many ways, but it is simply just realizing that you cannot imagine yourself. You are nothing, as in, not a thing. You cannot be defined by anything you imagine that you are. This is the same as "realizing what you are" or realizing exactly what your experience is.

Again, enlightenment is not a model. In the same way that a glass of water is not a model. Or the sound of music is not a model. Or the taste of vanilla is not a model. The idea of "higher" and "lower" is always a mental model, because it is a duality created through thought and inference. Leo does not propose any "models of enlightenment", he does not even believe that enlightenment exists anymore.

You are talking about a model of "higher and lower consciousness." Enlightenment is not a dualistic model. Your question is mostly secular to Leo's own model of reality, not enlightenment.

You can't keep separating what is "absolute" from your current experience. You might as well say "you can't experience the absolute" or "the absolute doesn't exist." You say the distinction is useful but it isn't, because you are using the distinction to make an existential statement about the absolute. You are confusing the map for the territory. Nothing is relative, you're just imagining that. Nothing. Nothing. No thing. You are conflating survival, and life itself, with self. That is an uphill battle, to say the least. Language itself is made out of distinctions, that is how communication works. I am not conceding to anything by communicating. You made the distinction of "uniqueness" or "certain characteristics that people have", and I am pointing to that and saying "this is not self."

The ego does not exist. It is not anything. You are confusing the map for the territory. Realizing that the ego does not exist is "God." The ego is just what you think your experience is. You have no ego, you just think that you do. Thinking that you have an ego is what ego is, it is not anything beyond that.

Might as well ask: "Am I sinning against God by doing x?"