Da77en

@Ishanga I agree. What I can account for is once you expand yourself into significantly profound states of joy, love, and ecstasy it’s so amazing and beautiful that you won’t want to find some sort of end to all experience. One piece of awareness I can give to anyone on this planet is that this: Earth is like a hell that you don’t know you are in. Consciousness is like this, any level of awareness can be seen as being in a woods that you don’t know you are in, you can’t actually see that you are in the “woods” until you raise your awareness enough look back and see it. Once you look back at the “woods” of Earth you will be crying tears of love and compassion at the realization that you’ve been in a hell all this time but you’ve finally made it out, or at least begin to come out of it. I recommend to anyone looking for a complete end to all experience to get themselves significantly out of the “woods” of the profound misalignments of Earth before they make a permanent end to all experience - if such a thing of ending all experience is even possible.

@ExplorerMystic Thanks for your advice, I appreciate it. I agree with your perspective that you never arrive to a final destination when it comes to spiritual pursuits. From my perspective, one of the most important things to achieve on the spiritual path is getting to a point where nothing can generate any kind of fear within you and thus you don’t need to worry about nervous breakdowns, mental illness, and such, even when you are taking potent psychedelics.

Please describe in detail what you mean by this so it doesn’t devolve into a non-dual debate.

Anyone who’s considering Mahasamadhi, let’s discuss it so we can gain a better understanding of it. It’s important that before we genuinely start considering potentially permanent decisions we need to have a sufficient understanding of what that particular decision is. Non-dual discussions aren’t sufficient when it comes to these kinds of understandings.

This is not about complaining or personal attacks. It's an observation and suggestion, we've been doing these non-dual debates excessively for years now. At the very least we can come to an agreement to not derail specific threads that aren't focused on the Non-Dual talking points.

I think you are drastically overestimating the level of consciousness of the people of this forum and you really don't have to worry about dissolving, you aren't going anywhere. When it comes to specific ideas of ending all of your experience with mahasamdhi, I suggest that these are misunderstandings. If you could actually end all experience entirely you would have done it already. Mahasamdhi is referring to more of a transcended state of being, beyond limited identities and physicality. This is just my personal understanding so take it with a grain of salt. If that is genuinely your highest goal, what’s the point of staying around? These Non-Dual debates don’t really get us anywhere when it comes to the higher level understandings of consciousness. If that is truly truly your highest goal I have the type of attitude that would encourage you to just do it and get it over with. If not then let’s explore some higher levels of consciousness. Make sure you fully understand it and make sure it’s actually the most aligned thing for you so that you don’t miss out on something higher and more worthwhile. Also when it comes to making potentially permanent spiritual decisions, or any kind of so called permanent decision, I suggest doing it out of love, ecstasy, clarity, intelligence, etc. Never out of fear.

I would estimate that about 3/4ths of the Spirituality subsection on this forum is specifically debating Non-Dual talking points. This is a huge bottleneck and this isn't the essence of spirituality.

@Princess Arabia I'm not referring to anyone in particular. The vast majority of threads in the Spirituality subsection are either specifically focused on Non-Duality talking points or end up being derailed into them, this is a very significant bottleneck if we want to progress to higher level understandings. When it comes to people who are dealing with chronic mental illnesses I don't recommend the Non-Duality targeted understandings because it has a tendency to make things way too intellectual which doesn't serve to bring people into more aligned states of being.

Time is an illusion yes but change is not. Referring to sages that lived 100s or 1000s of years ago as a justification to not use approaches that are relevant to current situations is a very limited approach from my perspective. The illusion of time is created by constantly looking at reality through different perspectives, all of those perspectives exist now. You can refer to something from the context of the so called past or projected future as long as you know that the idea of the so called past and future is just referring to different perspectives that all exist now. If someone starts to believe that something actually exists in the “past/future” that’s where the misperception is happening. Lastly, this is besides the point and I'm not talking about you or anyone in particular. Many of these self proclaimed non-dualists, whether the students or teachers of non-duality who specifically target the non-duality aspects of consciousness. These kinds of people often have very one dimensional understandings of consciousness and make things very intellectual. One way you can understand whether someone truly understands what they are talking about is whether they are able to talk about consciousness in a multi-dimensional multi-faceted approach or whether they just refer to the same one dimensional talking points and cant actually explain them very deeply. One dimensionality is a sign that someone is making spirituality into too much of an intellectual pursuit.

A question I have for many people on this forum who tend to make enlightenment into a binary achievement where if you have it, you no longer need to do anything more or expand any more. My question is simply, what do you plan on doing after your so called enlightenment happens? My honest understanding is that consciousness is infinite and thus no matter how enlightened you become there is still more to do, learn, achieve, explore, realize, etc.

Aspects of Consciousness Mega-Thread Consciousness is multidimensional, multifaceted, meta logical, and contains an infinite amount of different aspects to it that can be realized, discovered, cultivated, etc. This is a Mega-Thread to list and discuss the multifaceted aspects of consciousness. Here is a list of some examples of aspects of consciousness I have discovered:

Yes, in the sense that any limited identity is an illusion and that the only thing here is consciousness. Whenever a “somebody” or “person” is talked about or at least when I talk about it, it’s referring to the different versions of consciousness that we call our individual personality constructs. One misunderstand I have seen is that some people think when they let go of their limited identities, they believe that they will no longer have an ego or personality. Even when you let go of your limited/separate identity you still have an ego/personality, it just becomes neutral and begins to function the way it was actually designed to function. I like your humor by the way.

I don’t really understand why some people on this forum are always talking about it’s just an idea, though, concept, story, etc. when this applies to anything we talk about. It’s conceptual until it’s made into a direct/experiential understanding. It’s true that some people are born in states where they have a higher level of presence or a lower level of presence then average.

One of the easiest ways to achieve psychedelic like states without drugs that I have discovered is by increasing your presence. This is Eckhart Tolle's main focus. When I significantly increase my presence I can tell my brain starts generating more DMT, my body reverberates more profoundly, and if I close my eyes I can see the "spiritual eye", movements of energy, psychedelic like visuals of geometric shapes, and have more profound dreams. You can go very deep into this particular aspect of consciousness and start to have full on psychedelic experiences with it and you can keep increasing your level of presence indefinitely. Remember that when you increase this aspect of your consciousness it can tend to intensify whatever is already within you and bring certain things to the surface so I recommend also gaining an understanding of how to let go of fear if you want to go significantly deep into this aspect. Presence goes way deeper than just the ordinary, don't think about the past/future attitude.

Thank you! There are so many profound states of meditation that we can dive into.

Revealing of Misalignments You can bring yourself into states where as opposed to ignoring and avoiding certain aspects of life, any misalignments within your consciousness and reality are automatically brought to your conscious attention in a constructive way so that they can be let go of. Transmutation of Energy You can bring yourself into states where there is more energetic malleability and you can transmute and transform any energies within your individual physical self and reality in a very powerful way. One example is simply the transmutation of negative energy into positive energy. The Power of the Imagination This is an aspect of consciousness you can cultivate to raise your overall intelligence and ability to maneuver through life in miraculous ways by tapping into the power of the imagination. You can use your imagination in more and more powerful ways, transcending the limitations of the intellect. Awareness of your Potential The more aware you become of your potential the more inspiration you will have to take action in that direction. Many people are in states of so called "laziness" because they simply don't have enough awareness of their potential to give them the inspiration to peruse higher levels of consciousness, enlightenment, and internal alignment. Cultivating more of a Relationship with your Higher Mind Your higher mind is the aspect of your consciousness which orchestrates the "outside" physical reality. Your physical personality construct is in charge of taking action, your higher mind is in charge of downloading information, guiding you, and reflecting back to you whatever state of being you are in, in the form of the situations you experience. You can cultivate more of a relation with your higher mind so that you have more clarity of what your physical personality construct job is and what other aspects of your consciousness are designed to do. Boundless Attached-Detachment This aspect of consciousness is delving into the nature of attachment, which is very similar to the nature of identity. The form aspect of your consciousness is attached to everything and the formless aspect of your consciousness is in a sense detached from everything. These two polarities create the stage for very balanced state of consciousness where you have complete engagement with form without becoming entangled with it. Artificially attaching yourself to certain things and not others creates separation, resistance, and limitation within your consciousness. In a state of being such as this, you will naturally take action for the highest well-being of your individual physical self and your reality as a whole.

Yes, its very exciting times right now. The great thing about spirituality is it's not someone's invention or ideology. If you start deconstructing any distorted, fear based ideas of life you become spiritual because that's life's natural state. The religions of this world and various other misunderstands society has accumulated for thousands of years are what need to be confronted and let go of if we want a healthy society and planet. Certain stereotypes of "spiritual people" have been created which might cause people to turn away from it and go back to the materialist and religious states. The accurate vibration of spirituality is unconditional love, ecstasy, and other aspects of ones true nature, any other association doesn't do it justice from my perspective. Materialistic and religious paradigms are constrictions and distortions within the overall playing field of “spirituality”.

Sadhguru is pretty legit but he still has some work to do if he wants to have more presence in the west. I agree that it's important to be evolved before you take action in the world it's just that the religious and materialist type people are doing it for a long time and they have pretty distorted understandings of life and thus we are dealing with these unhealthy societal structures. Spirituality has been repressed and is just starting to see light in the modern age because of improvements in information exchange, technology, etc.

From what I have observed, there's a lot of discussion on this forum, and the spiritual community in general but there isn't enough action to balance that out. There really is no point to just talking about things without taking significant action on those things. This is a thread to discuss and come up with particular actions we can take both individually and collectively to produce a more evolved and Enlightened world. I've seen that religious people have taken way more responsibility towards the world than the average self proclaimed spiritual person. If we want to continue evolving we need to start taking way, way, way more action and less talk. The unhealthy state of development this world has is a clear indicator that we have so much more work to do. We don't even necessarily need to talk about Enlightenment at this point, just basic societal health. Actions we could take Start pushing to get basic aspects of consciousness taught in school such as state of being, beliefs, emotions, thoughts, behaviors, manifestation, fear, etc. Provide for more accurate information when it comes to mental health Transform the work culture of wage slavery. Doing things such as getting UBI, higher minimum wage, etc.

The limited, separate self is an illusion, the Self with a capital S is not an illusion. Consciousness is Self. The universal response to becoming more in alignment with your true nature is joy, love, ecstasy, etc. My honest perspective is that it's not about choosing whether to pursue enlightenment or not, there is no other option. Any kind of unenlightened state is the result out of alignment with your true nature and is the root cause of fear, suffering, negativity, etc. Even if someone delays their expansion of consciousness, eventually life will confront them in such a way where they don't have any other option but to expand.

This is very common and natural. These kinds of spiritual contemplations start to expand your consciousness and when that happens fear can come up. I have a post that explains how fear works and give a very direct explanation and process on how to let it go and recommend adding that to your toolkit for your explorations into higher levels of consciousness. Other than that, recognize that there's no need to go too deep too quickly. Give yourself time to ground yourself, stabilize, etc.

If you are making the Buddha and Alan Watts your spiritual teachers just know that the Buddha focused on one very narrow aspect of consciousness and Alan Watts took spirituality very intellectually, no offense to either of them. There needs to be adaptability when it comes to spirituality or we are just going to turn spirituality into the same kind of dogmatic system as religion.

We have way more resources than people did hundreds and thousands of years ago so it's much easier to evolve way past their level of evolution. It's not about knowing better than someone, it's about updating your approach to whatever times you live in.

Money and power is neutral. How are we supposed to provide abundance to the world without it. Until we get to a point where we let go of the need for money as a society it’s very significant.

@James123 No offense but I see you saying the same idea that “it’s just thoughts, ideas, concepts, etc”. if someone says something you don’t agree with. Anything we say is just a concept.