Tim R

I'm now sitting at home, typing these words. Around 40 minutes ago, I and a friend (female) were harassed by some dude (It's 1am right now and we were having a couple of beers). He wanted a few of things of us, but I didn't give them to him. I didn't know whether he was on drugs or anything (it certainly seemed that way) or whether he'd draw had a knife after I denied him what he wanted. He followed us for a while and verbally harassed my friend. I stepped in between. And I was scared. But behind the fear - there was allowing. Allowing in and of itself. This... embodied way of saying "yes, I say yes to whatever experience fills my consciousness". Instead of reacting, I responded. Calmly, but afraid. I didn't have a grim attitude about my fear. I didn't feel like I had to summon all my strength and face this terrible thing. This allowing I felt was not something "I did". It was simply there, without me having to do anything. Consciousness is not afraid. You are not afraid, even when you are afraid. You can be scared shitless, and yet - you are allowing. Allowing fear. Allwing the most awful things. You are "allowingness" itself.

It would be wrong to reduce the cause of suffering to "desire" - because then I ask: "what is desire?". And a looong rat tail would follow. And this rat tail turn out to be a circle. Suffering doesn't have any one cause, it's not a linear, but a circular chain of causation. All elements of which arise simultaneously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratītyasamutpāda This idea of the 12 fold chain of dependent origination is a key idea in Buddhism. Buddhism is a dialectic method, i.e. it's like a dialog between a teacher and a student. "I suffer and I want to stop suffering." "Desire is the cause of suffering." "ok, so I must stop desiring. Sh*t, I now desire to stop desiring." "Don't desire any more than you can." "well, I'm still desiring and I don't know how to stop. I can't stop desiring, I can't not stop desiring, whatever I do, I'm desiring. I'm trapped and I can't do anything about it. F*ck!" What the student needs to see is that the solution to this problem lies in the simple discovery that the self he thought himself to be - is not real. And then he escaped suffering. Why? Because suffering only exists and is only a problem, as long as there is an "I" that can suffer. Suffering is a result of "I". It's a result of resistance, aka survival. But when there's no one left to survive or to resist, suffering seizes to be.

Didn't think I'd ever live to see this day...wow?? Yup. You could say that being and non-being constitute existence. Or that existence itself is neither being nor non-being, but the underlying unity of them. Existence is truly non-dual.

@Someone here Then what exactly is your question? How to connect point 2 and 3?

@Someone here What makes you think that? What if existence is actually absolute and has no opposite? You can't go outside existence. Even the most "nothing" state you could imagine (for example the way things were before you were born), even that is existence. Existence must be all encompassing. You can't leave existence, because wherever you would go - you're still inside existence.

Hello my dear friends a few weeks ago, I had my deepest insight into the nature of consciousness / reality yet. I haven't shared it on the forum explicitly, only sort of build into some replies I gave here and there to questions, which now no longer bother me. Anyway, when I had this insight, two things became rather clear to me: 1) obviously, the content of the insight itself (which I won't go into in this post) 2) (and this is actually the more important one for me) what my path will look like from here on It's somewhat counterintuitive - you'd think that after a great and deep insight, you would be more motivated than ever to keep digging even deeper, to inquire further and understand more. But this is not what happened. What happened is that this insight showed me that it's time to "come back" to earth. Not because I don't want to live a spiritual life anymore or because I feel that I'm "done" - but because I now understand thoroughly, that there is no difference at all between the "spiritual" and the "mundane". I thought I had understood, but I hadn't. The mundane, the ordinary, the everyday survival-oriented life is the great thing. It is consciousness and love. The collapsing of the distinction between the spiritual and the ordinary has humbled me a great deal (more than I thought it would) - no longer am I somewhere else; somewhere different from all the fools in the world. No longer do I feel that I understand something greater than "ordinary folk" and no longer do I feel that there is something special about me. I feel like a complete and utter fool who had a lovely dream - and I can't tell you how much I love it I wanted to share this with you because it's a very important step on my journey and I'm really looking forward to what comes next and to how my life will unfold from here on. And lastly I would like to say thank you to all of you who have shared their wisdom, insight and knowledge about so many different topics. This forum can be an absolute goldmine (when it's not mental masturbation season again). You as a forum have been an important part of my journey for the last year or so, and for that I am quite thankful

Careful, many questions of this kind are so problematic not because the answer is complicated or difficult to understand, but because the question is asked in the wrong way. The solution to a meaningless riddle is not to be found in or as any answer, but in the dissolution of the question(-ing) itself. This is the real meaning behind "not-knowing". It isn't that you simply "don't know the answer", but that you have seen through the meaninglessness of the question. Which is a far more profound form of understanding things. Because then you're mind is truly at peace. The question "why is there something rather than nothing?" is one such a riddle. It is asked in the wrong way, because it assumes, that "nothing" and "something" are different from each other and fundamentally irreconcilable. But when you see that they are indeed identical, the question itself looses meaning - which makes it disappear. This is the method of "Koans" in Zen. The teacher will ask a meaningless question, and the only way of finding the solution to this riddle lies in the dis-solution of the entire riddle altogether. Anybody here could "give you the answer" to this question about something vs nothing. But it won't satisfy you, until you see through it yourself.

@Batman No I don't think I should

You never left nonduality. "Experience" only appears as duality so long as you insist on there being "experience". You don't need to enter general anesthetic or deep sleep or whatever. Here it is.

"Does everything happen for a reason?" Three concepts (and their implicit assumptions) that need to be questioned before you can proceed to find an answer.

Purpose is like playing. You don't have to do it, but you can do it in ways that are very entertaining. When you play a game, it's nice (and essential!) to forget that it's a game, because that way, things can become truly entertaining. To pretend that it really does matter is a great thing. And to be able to pretend so thoroughly that you forget about the game - bravo!

This man is blind since his early childhood. I just found this fascinating ted talk where he talks about blindness and the terror we have associated with being/becoming blind, i.e. unaware. But he has developed an incredible mechanism to "see" his surroundings; he uses clicking sounds, like a bat to "echolocate". It's quite amazing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHYCs8xtzUI

Good point. There's a great book by Erich Fromm "To Have or To Be" . It's fascinating how we use the word "have" in contexts where people once used to build sentences with "be".

@Adodd Your question "what is time" is pretty damn vague too... it depends on what you mean by "time".

@levani dude, 200ml of vodka is enough to get you seriously sh*tfaced. 200ml equals 10 shots. One shot would be enough to make things weird, but 10? I highly recommend you don't do it. 200ml is waaay to much. Even for dilution for preparing small dosages. 200ml for 200µg is a factor of 1000x. That's too much.

The first barrier you need to overcome is "should". "Should" is bullshit. There is nothing you "should" do (which is btw not the same as saying "you should do nothing"). You can't really help people properly if you don't want to. If you help them because you feel you "should" do it, you might as well not do it at all. The problem you're facing is what is meant in the bible with "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself". See? "You must love" - but this can't be done, you can't force yourself to love. Either you do or you don't. My advice is to first investigate your feeling of "should help people" -what is it in you that makes you think that you should help people and how you feel when you don't help and or love people. Investigate, accept and embrace. Love and compassion will come naturally from within. There's no need to pretend or to force anything. But you will find that the more you know, accept and love yourself, the stronger your compassion for others will develop. And then, there won't be any "shoulds", but an honest desire to help others.

...something wrong with being an unconscious fuck? Yes? Then maybe you're one of them. If such aliens had the technology, they wouldn't decimate all the "unconscious" people, they would simply alter their brain to make them more open-minded. Because that's really all you need.

@BipolarGrowth lmao dude, that's perfect??? When I read the title and saw you crying - I felt that❤

@BipolarGrowth "Leading where?" is the question you ought to ask

@Mafortu The point is to realize that in reality, there are no "things". Yes, "everything" and "nothing" are identical, but believe me, people don't understand the meaning of either word. When we talk of nothingness, people immediately have an image in their mind of what this nothingness might look like. Using the word "everything", people also have an image in their mind; an image, which contains very many things. It's important to remember that both images are neither nothing nor everything, but rather like "something". I'd rather have you think about the universe being nothing, because 1. it balances your view that the universe is only something/everything 2. in nothingness, there are no boundaries. Which is also the case for "everything", but it's probably easier to see in nothingness 3. it simply wouldn't appear to say anything so say "reality is everything" instead of "reality is nothing".

People actually fall for this sh*t??

No self, no other - and no "conscious entities", in other words, no one with a separate consciousness (which some of you apparently like to call "mind" like Rupert Spira did in one of his videos). There is no "your" experience and "my" experience. There are no two experiences, neither of the same nor of anything different. You are all like fingers on the same hand. Got that? "I'm the only finger around and only I am real, only my consciousness is what exists", says middle finger. "Fuck you man, solipsism ain't real and we are all fingers on our own!!" shouts thumb. While the index and ring fingers watched the two of them in complete confusion, little finger stood next to them all and had a great time. Because little finger had sat his ass down, done the work and realized who he truly was - and at the same time who everyone else was! Be like little finger.

@mp22 There is no contradiction at all. You simply haven't yet understood what "meaninglessness" actually is and how deep it really goes. If you think that meaninglessness is a problem and that therefore now you should end your life, you haven't understood. What happens, when truly everything becomes meaningless? Well, obviously the fact that everything is meaningless becomes meaningless too. And in that way, meaninglessness flips inside out - the moment you realize what 100% meaninglessness is, man.. That's liberation. That's a true gift. And you say "thank god this is just an illusion!" But you see, the illusion is real. If you think that "illusion" is a bad word, you also don't understand what is meant by saying "the universe is an illusion". Please be careful. Because it seems to me that you have adopted some of the things Leo or someone else said as a philosophy and then turned it into a prescription for what to do. But that's not how it works. Be very, very careful with rationalizing ideas like meaninglessness or suicide. It can develop into some seriously nasty problems.

Nope, you won't get any real answer for the hard questions, not on any forum, not from anyone, not in any words. Either you get platitudes as answers for asking hard questions, or you ask simple questions and get "comprehensive answers".