Osaid

You're basically right and the discrepancy you're noticing has validity. Enlightenment is not the same thing as awakening though. But I think it might be hard for you to reconcile that because you perceive "realizing absolute truth" as something that can happen infinitely and so you lump enlightenment into the same category, but this is actually a misconception spawned from the paradigm of chasing awakenings forever. The thing is, truth is realized once because reality is one thing. That's what enlightenment is, that's what absolute truth is, and that's what all the enlightened people have been pointing to for ages. Awakenings, deeper understandings, and psychedelic trips are not enlightenment. They are relative. Enlightenment is absolute. There is nothing beyond the absolute. The idea of "deeper understanding of Truth/God" is the classic fallacy of believing that something exists beyond the absolute, it is just worded differently because of cognitive dissonance. Deeper understandings occur, but they are all relative (because "deeper" implies relativity), and then that is what you would call awakening. Truth is one thing, it doesn't split itself up into multiple things, and then you would call that enlightement. Awakenings can lead up to enlightenment, but they are not enlightenment. In any case, I think you are noticing a very deep relativity/falsehood poking its head out when it comes to all these awakenings, and I would say that you are on the right track when it comes to this. I particularly like the hypothetical that @Bandman pointed to in a recent thread:

Exactly. This guy became the devil by believing in the devil. Imagination goes deep. Notice the ideas he plants in your mind: THAT is the devil.

Something everyone can take away from this thread, for sure. On a side note, don't you suspect some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy happening here? The idea of a devil judging things and only Jesus being able to save you, isn't that somewhat devilish in itself? Maybe that idea itself is the devil? Maybe you truly have been possessed and deceived by the devil, but not in the way you think of it. I don't think making statements about the afterlife is very humble. You don't even know what the weather is gonna be tomorrow. Humble yourself.

@Vladimir Thoughts?

Yeah amazing I'll make sure to link this thread next time in the future when someone else asks

Whatever it is, I think it's certainly a memory of you "experiencing" the future. You have some recollection of the experience happening before. So, somehow, you perceived what was going to happen in the future at some point in the past. A key thing to realize is that it is not a memory of you simply trying to predict the future. It is a memory of you EXPERIENCING it. The only way I can think of this occurring is either through dreams or some alternate past life or dimension or something. The dream scenario is much more likely. As I said previously, one day I had a dream which predicted like 4 of the things that I did that day. And that's the only reason I could even come to this conclusion. My initial conception when it happened was "Oh, this feels like Deja Vu", but then when I inspected it closer it came to me "Wait a minute, this is what I experienced myself doing in the dream today, that's why it feels familiar." So I am very adamant about this theory.

My personal theories about it:

Oh, interesting. I feel most people wouldn't have this sentiment though. Is it because they don't know how to use the dream properly, or are they simply unaware of how it is affecting them? Or both?

It's as much of a paradigm as the color red haha. Well, for you it is a paradigm, because you're not enlightened. So I get it. In the same way that the color red is intellectual for a blind person.

....In a dream?

That's fine, but I would make a distinction and say that the dream stays a dream. It's indirect in the way it affects reality. I make that distinction because it still operates within this paradigm of "I was sleeping, dreamt something, and then it changed something in the waking state."

No, I'm not using mind or paradigms at all. I'm enlightened. So everything I'm saying is just me describing what I am directly experiencing right now. I am directly conscious of what I speak about. I know that this is different from how awakenings tend to be, though.

When you're lucid, the experience of being lucid is you imagining yourself sleeping in real life. Your waking state memory is discovered. That comes with imagining brain activity and a real physical body. Of course that is not directly experienced. But I am saying that being lucid is you "overlaying" that story of you existing in the waking state onto the dream. That is the only way for you to come to the conclusion "Oh, this is a dream I'm having." Your waking state identity is meshed with the dream identity, and your waking state identity involves a human who has brain activity and dreams. The idea of "having brain activity" is an idea and experience that occurs in consciousness. Consciousness can imagine that it does have brain activity and that the dream state is harmless. Yes, the experience is as real as can be. And it is experienced. But it does not have to have consequences which you are unaware of, consciousness can of course be aware of that if it wants. "consequences to self" is always just whatever you experience, ultimately.

It's not an insight you integrate, so it's not intellectual or memory based like awakenings. You're not "deepening" it and "fitting it in", that is intellect and finite mind. It's as insightful as seeing the color red or hearing sound. It's just experiential. It's something you are directly conscious of. Again, this entire statement is an attempt to "go beyond the absolute." "Reality is infinite" can also just be seen as saying "reality is reality." If you follow this, you are saying that there is something beyond reality. There just isn't. When you say "reality is infinite, but there's more!" as if that is just one aspect out of many, that is your mind partitioning reality into different components. But reality is one.

Good thing enlightenment is the former and not the latter. You are operating from the latter, which is mind, and so you project finitude onto enlightenment. All of you arguing don't even know what "reality is infinite" actually means. You have a very materialistic notion of it, and you project it onto enlightenment. But of course, if you're not enlightened, it just exists as a finite idea for you. So I totally get it! I'm just saying to keep an open mind about it, which is not happening here. That is all. As I've said many times, it's not an insight or understanding that you integrate, as you do with awakenings. Awakenings can be imagined and chased after forever, yes. Not enlightenment.

I get what you're saying. But you're projecting waking state logic onto the dream. The waking state logic is exactly what allows you to perceive the experience as a dream in the first place. Waking state is deciding "this is and isn't harmful." You are not having this conundrum during the dream state. The dream state has nothing to do with it, and therefore the waking state conundrum actually does not exist there for the time being, and this is exactly what defines a dream. The sentiment of your conclusion doesn't really matter. To dream means that you're not conscious of the waking state. If you are conscious of the waking state, only then does the dream become a dream. When you're dreaming, the dream is not a dream. When you're awake, only then you can say "that was a dream" because the waking state contrasts it. So there's nothing to do at all, really. If you're dreaming, you're already doing the best you can. If you're lucid dreaming, you can simply see that it is a dream and it won't have any affect on you because it gets recontextualized as harmless brain activity and you can also act lucidly like your normal self would. That becomes your new dream, so to speak. The dream then adopts the context of a "lucid person." There are certain states like sleep paralysis and astral projection which might have more "realness", but those are different and I wouldn't consider them dreams. Is it possible for dreams to affect the waking state? In a sense. But it always stays as a dream, because it is a dream. So it's indirect at best. Anything else is not a dream anymore.

Sorry, I was being sarcastic. I guess it would be irresponsible to not clarify.

Because there's MORE CONSCIOUSNESS (sarcasm)

The reason why enlightenment seems like an illusion to you guys is because you're comparing it to your awakenings, which ARE relative "illusions." All you guys have ever known in regards to spirituality is just endless awakenings, that's your method. And so you project that same standard onto enlightenment. You're thinking: "Oh yeah I've had lots of awakenings, but I've also had much deeper ones! And all of them showed me different aspects of truth and reality! So there's no way that this singular awakening called 'enlightenment' is final!" You think enlightenment is just some state of consciousness or awakening among many. That's how awakenings and "higher consciousness" work, but enlightenment is something different. There is nothing higher than the absolute truth. Enlightenment is realizing what is absolutely true. Not an aspect or facet of it, the actual thing. There were never "different aspects" of truth, of course not. To say otherwise means that you have abandoned the idea of reality being one thing.

How many times are you guys gonna realize what God is until you realize what God is?

Weird how that happens You love to see it

I don't know what you think I implied, but it probably wasn't what I was saying. Never said anything about "all there is" and wasting possibilities. I think it is a common human interpretation to see what I just said as some sort of value system, like, you're not allowed to think or believe things. And so you compare it to living like an ant or whatever.

Lol no, the "dream" perfectly incorporates itself. Never changes. Just your beliefs about it. Very funny when you truly realize this. Imagine you start up a new Minecraft realm. The immediate and absolute perception is a terrain of blocks, and a rendered distance, and whatever else. You think, "I'm human". You think, "Nothing exists beyond perception". You think, "I'm God creating all of this". You think, "I'm a creature that survives in this weird dimension." You think, "There are other dimensions beyond this one." You think, "This is all just illusion." You think, "I'm just imagining all of this." You think, "I'm just playing a video game." And you can think forever. But all these thoughts revolve and contort themselves around the EXACT same perceptual experience, which is always there. Because experience is not actually changing, what is happening is that you are literally imagining different concepts as if they are more true or real than the previous one, and then using those concepts to point to the exact same direct experience which all your previous concepts have pointed to, but you perceive it as different because you react differently, and it triggers different thought patterns, and the content of the concept is slightly different, and whatever else. In a hyperbolic way, it's kind of like when someone smokes a lot of weed and is like "Oh my god dude, have you ever realized that this wall is literally like, a wall? You can't think of a wall, it's always directly experienced! Woahhhh..." It's the age old stereotype of weed smokers stating the "obvious" in a more profound sentiment. The experience of the wall did not change. Their previous beliefs about walls did.

Knowing happens inside of you. Knowing is a part of you. A part of something cannot capture something that is bigger than it. Fundamentally, the very nature and medium of knowing cannot capture YOU. It infinitely obsesses over itself because it is a small part of what it is trying to capture. Anything you know about something is always ABOUT something, it is never that thing by definition. Thus, knowing is only useful for things that are not experienced by you. Like, the weather tomorrow. Or a math equation. There is no point in knowing about a door that exists in front of you, because you are already directly experiencing the door. There is nothing to know about it, because your knowing is a symbol of the actual thing. Knowing about it becomes a useless input on your part. The only thing to be known about is what is not experienced, and that knowing will always just be experienced as knowledge, until it is experienced. But when it is experienced, it is not knowledge anymore, it is just experience. The desire to know what you are is contradictory, because the thing which you are is CREATING a part of experience which is saying "I want to know what I am." Whatever you know yourself as, is not you. It's always a part of you that was created by you. It's like a TV which is trying to display itself on the screen. This is impossible because the screen is just a small part of what the TV is, so no matter how accurately it displays itself, that display will not be itself. And then it will fruitlessly engage in that forever, until it understands that it already is what it is trying to display. When you ask this question: "How do I know myself?" It is in a similar sentiment to asking: "How do I know what the color red is?" The color red is ALWAYS the perception of itself. It cannot be delegated to "knowing." This is exactly the case when it comes to YOU as well. The color red exists inside you, along with all the other sense perceptions. And they will not be delegated to any "knowing" achieved by any entity inside of itself. If colors do not exist, do you know what they are? If you do not exist, do colors know what they are? The reason you don't know something is because it is not you. It is knowledge. You can't know knowledge because it is not experienced and it is not you. <<<<<<< This is the most fundamental and succinct way to put it

You. If it's not you, then you don't know it.