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If we want to be even more accurate ..we should admit that even the present doesn't exist. The present is just the surface between the past and the present. We have an illusion that there exist three different tempuses, but it is only in language that they actually exist. The future does not exist, it is in it’s very nature not to exist. The present doesn’t exist, for it is just the border between the past and the present. What exist is the past, for that is where we observe the world. We experience through memory. The moment you see something it is already past. The moment you experience is already behind you. All that you see, hear or feel is experienced in the past. All our thoughts are in fact memories. Your whole life is not what happens now, but the memories of what already has happened.

How was that year? Could you describe that year ,how you felt ? Did you enjoy the suffering while it was present ? Because you can make the argument that in retrospect the suffering taught you great lessons and made you more wise .so I'm not denying the role that suffering can play as a teacher. But I'm not a masochist as well to literally fall in love with suffering.

Suffering is bad. Because you are supposed to take care of your self as you liked to be cared of. My friend you are a tyrant against yourself. For the sake of an argument: is it bad if I dont want to make my child feel happy ever? Remember there are people who made bad things and still live happily because they forgave themselves for what they've done. Reward and punishment is also applicable to one self. Reward your fucking self dont alway punish it.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is a choice . And no..we don't need Suffering. In fact your whole life is built around achieving pleasure and avoiding pain. Wait till you suffer a terminal illness and then come tell me this with a straight face

When I percive an object I don't contact it with my sense organs . Reality doesn't actually get percived by sense organs . For example sight ..you dont see objects with your eyes..you see them exactly where they are occurring (which is a distance from your eyes ). The visual field occurs exactly where it is occurring and not in the eyes of the perceiver. But it's a grand illusion that cannot be seem through easily. it is fundamentally impossible to be sure what is the ontological truth of our experience/existence because the laws of physics and EVERYTHING we can possibly observe or measure could be “Just how the universe works” or “The consequences of a simulation” .and there is no way, even in principle, to tell the difference. You know that you exist, in whatever sense of existence; I can only assume that, but I shall so assume. If the world is a simulation, you still know that you exist. Yes, it is a different category of existence than if this were the baseline unsimulated universe. But since neither you nor I can tell the difference, it doesn’t matter.

If I hold a unicorn in my mind right now..it displays as a faint image. Then it fades into nothingness or my memory probably. So I don't get how abstract objects are eternal. They seem subject to time and change.

@Adamq8 Newton talked about Spinoza's God a a lot. I don't think he believed in the Christian God (the bearded man in the clouds who judges you ). Spinoza’s “god”, however, can be interpreted a couple different ways: a) an actual “god” being is everything. Or b) everything is “god” without that referring to a being, “god” and “everything” are just synonyms.

I don't necessarily know if I'm enlightened. I know I view the world in what I consider to be an awakened state, but that doesn't mean I'm quite as awakened as the Buddha. I do know that I let go of many of my friends when I began to awaken. I began to search for more real, honest and true friendships. I lost interest al gatherings . So, I isolated myself by searching for truth, and now I've begun to find like minded people. I'm not so isolated, I simply don't search to be accepted by others People want to be surrounded by people like them. It's a big factor why the average (high IQ individual) has less friends than the average (low IQ person). There's just more average people than there are brilliant. If you’re in the top 1% of intelligence that means that literally 99% of people are going to be below your level intellectually (and therefore possibly mentally, emotionally, socially). Imagine you're in the top 1% of enlightenment. That means you're going to want to be in a community of or friends with similar people but there just aren't many.

Interesting .so should I get Rid of all my attachments? Is it realistic ,possible or doable to love everyone and everything equally? For example I cannot love pain and suffering. And I must do that in order to survive.

Not at all. Enlightenment does not hinder one from talking or having friends. However, depending on the kinds of conversation and/or friends…you may find you don’t have much interest in them anymore. You may find yourself more inclined to speak about spiritual topics and hang out with more spiritual people. Or nothing may change. Enlightenment doesn’t cause any difficulties at all. Enlightenment includes becoming compassionate. People like those who are compassionate, but an enlightened person is not more attached to one person than another.

According to tradition, the Buddha offered the answer on one of his many journeys: “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. ... Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.” If you follow Buddha’s teachings then you don’t need trust. You hear what the teacher teaches and you go back to your practice. You verify everything the teacher teaches in your own practice. You don’t need to trust the teacher - you do need to trust yourself. And you need to trust the teachings. The teaching are not the same as the teacher. Many spiritual traditions, especially those derived from hinduism, proscribe to the belief that one must completely submit to a Guru in order to achieve any spiritual anything. The Guru is the gate keeper - he will either let you in or he won't. The Guru is the supreme authority and the disciple submits to the Guru fully, completely, unquestioningly. That is supposed to be the only way to enlightenment. I personally disagree with that, so did Buddha.

I really don't know anything about anything. I only concern myself with the present moment. The quality of the present moment is all that matters. Because the present moment is all that exists . I might go to sleep tonight and never wake up again. Therefore I don't think or plan the next week ahead .or even the next day . I live completely spontaneously in the now . Osho agrees with me on this :

@KGrimes habits/activities which you were trying to change/avoid returning... and returning with a vengeance .. that's what I believe it is. Now, the important thing to note is that if/when it happens... know that there is nothing wrong with it. Just be aware that it is occurring... what else can YOU do anyways. YOU do not control your actions/thoughts... only watch them. So, watch this play which is just another step on the path. It's all part of the natural spontaneous unfolding of life ..out of anyone's control. Find peace in that.

I'm a University student. I don't have a job yet .my big brother is a graduate. He has two jobs .he pays all our bills . So yeah..I'm blessed . I don't have to worry about money. And you don't have to.

You only be In the present moment. Have you ever caught your body mechanism in the last moment or the next? Thoughts can however go back even before the big bang or it can go forward to the millionth big bang or more! Thought is time and time is thought. LIFE is always HERE and NOW. In order to get inspired you could read some books about it. A popular one is "The power of now" by the spiritual author Eckhart Tolle. Tolle was voted as the "most spiritually influential person in the world" in 2011. As far as making money ..you can still go to your job and do all your obligations..it's just that you are no longer the doer .you become the witness to your thoughts and deeds .a passive impartial observer. Rather than an active doer.

I manifest it using my superpowers. I deal with the issues of the moment .I never plan beforehand .if something in the moment needs organising then I will do it . If not .then not. Quite simple ,Eh?

Reality is subjective. From our subjective inputs we deduce the existence of an objective world. The goal of science is to understand (explain, predict) the latter. There’s no particular limit on how well we can do that but there are practical limits. The universe is just too big to hope to figure out everything. So although science will never explain everything about objective reality, there’s no ‘mystery’, unexplainable in principle. It is not the goal of science to "explain everything." It is the goal of science to create models that allow us to understand processes in and make predictions about the natural world. That's it. The complexity of reality could be infinite with each layer being explained only to reveal yet a deeper unexplained underlying layer. We also may have fundamental limits as to what we can observe directly and indirectly that would preclude full and complete knowledge of existence.

I do not care if 1, 10, or 100 scientists are or were atheists or theists. I simply do not need their approval or permission to determine what is rational or not. Newton was a very strange guy. I think he would be most accurately described as a mystic. He didn't really go in for organised religion. I'm not sure what his views were on deities specifically ..he was more into mystical universal energies than a personal god. While undoubtedly a genius, he was certainly not a rational individual. And Descartes was believer in the Christian god. Like I said given that his entire argument for why he trusts his senses relies on the benevolence of god.

I glossed over it but I didn't understand most of it. So if you can give a brief explanation to it again would be appreciated. However I understand that nonduality means Not two. The moment you know you exist duality has begun to impress perception. You begin to count ‘I am’. ‘I am’ spontaneously creates the illusory world with the concept of separation being impressed through the ‘I am a body’ idea. Prior to knowing you are, you are. The sensation ‘I am’ or ‘I exist’ has appeared to you. Without knowing you are, you of course are. This is the essence of non-duality. Once you realize your total aloneness, there is no mind .the mind is your past, the mind is the other. Ordinarily, when you are alone your mind continues talking, it becomes the other; there is dialogue between your mind and yourself. But when you are totally alone, you are alone. Now there is no mind and there is no God; yoe divine. So I cannot say you become one with God because to say so presupposes duality: it presupposes that God is one and you are the other. Even to say that existence is divine is to divide it; there can be no nondivine existence. It is divineness or it is existence; there is no need to use two terms. To say it is existence is enough; to say it is divineness is enough. The moment we say divine existence we create a division; then existence is divine and something else is not divine. But that is not the case: there is nothing that is not part of existence, nothing that is not divine.

The last decade I could get away with being a loner and keep moving with my life. Now that I'm not young anymore I'm forced to interact more with society. I hate humanity and existence like never before. I hated humanity and society before, but I was on my own, I wasn't forced to interact with it like I'm being forced right now. The more I contemplate, the more I hate. I'm not even bitter about it, it's a feeling of disgust I can't describe. At least I still enjoy the small things. Reading, writing, painting, playing instruments, a nice meal, exercising, playing with animals, nature. But I'm feeling extremely angry, I don't want to be part of society, I don't know how to go back to being completely alone. My human nature is making me desire love, relationships, material things the older I get, and I can't understand why, I was more at peace when I was younger. Interacting with others has been corrupting my mind. Just wanted to spit this before going to the college. I'm in no path for improvement, I don't want to "improve", I just want to be by myself and I can't even have that. I can't see myself not having that for the next X years.

@r0ckyreed so your position is that there is no cause for the present moment?..but that's only true if we assume that the present moment all that exists . But even then ..how Do you explain the existence of the present moment if its uncaused as you claim ? I am surprised as, to why, the problem persists. If one asks, what is the cause of the universe? And then...What is the cause of the cause which caused the universe? And then What is the cause of the cause of the cause which caused the universe ad infinitum You encounter a strange problem That cannot be solved unless you posit a first cause /aka God.

What about the flaws of atheism? My main issue with atheism is that it's a statement of unbelief, not one of belief, which leads theists astray, they've only ever had to invent better stories than rival religions, or exterminate them, so they don't know how to dispell unbelief, except with the tactics that lead to unbelief in the first place. The other issue, is that because atheism isn't a belief, it only deals with a single aspect of a person's personality, which again, confuses theists, who assume that because theism dominates their lives, that by analogy atheism dominates the lives of atheists Most atheists are buying into the materialist paradigm. Which was oroen to be completely false by quantum mechanics in the last century. But scientists nowadays are afraid of discussing the radical ramifications of quantum mechanics which completely debunk the materialist paradigm and therefore atheism.

I think you are not grasping the infinite regress problem. You cannot say that this present moment is caused by an infinite chain of previous causes. Because it would take infinite time to reach this moment. Therefore never really reach it . Example: Q: If something can’t come from nothingness, who created God? A: An earlier divine being. Q: Who created the earlier divine being? A: An even earlier divine being. Q: And who created that divine being? A: An even earlier divine being. Q: And who created that divine being? A: An even earlier divine being. Q: And who created that divine being? …and so on forever..

Well said ?. Thanks. Will check out. Is it available for free online as a PDF?

There is nowhere else to live other than this moment. Purify your ego of Time’s undue influence, and you will come to realise the same. Past and Future don’t exist other than in the human mind. Time is our creation, not a universal truth. Beyond Time, there is Eternity. Eternity is what remains when Time is restored to its rightful place. The problem is, we lost control of Time and now Time controls us instead of the other way around. We have travelled so far outside of ourselves, we no longer remember our way home. Without Time hijacking ego, Past and Future are denied airtime and the return journey is an effortless arising. This moment is home. No matter how far we think we’ve travelled, the truth is, we never actually left. Personally speaking, I live in Eternity, but I occasionally visit Past and Future when its useful for me to do so.