The0Self

Fuck yeah. Studying for my ecology exam can wait.

Insight after unconditional love insight, is not insight. Unconditional love insight before other insight, is not unconditional love insight. After insight into unconditional love, it's all over.

Not that it'll be anything revolutionary, but don't go overboard with it. I had quite a bit of meditation skill, so maybe that's why it worked too well, but anytime I would experience anything remotely disagreeable, I'd lean into it and try to intensify its unpleasantness, which would counter-intuitively make it disappear. I thought I'd discovered the holy grail... But every time I did this I had the hidden agenda of escaping suffering, which the mind then caught on to and so it didn't work for a while. It caused issues...

Emptiness (Unconditional) Love Nonduality All basically the same.

Depends on how paranoid these thoughts are. The more associated paranoia, the more it can help to pretend to maximize the fearfulness of the thoughts. They are driven by aversion to fear. Turning-up (counterintuitively) an imaginary dial of scariness/fear may dissolve them.

@Raptorsin7 In meditation, just from the focused attention and associated lack of mental activity in all the “normal“ places can induce incredible samadhi-like states. Basically there’s always “more.” Until there’s nobody there that could get more, at which point it’s realized: there was never anybody there. There’s only what seems to happen. No actual meaning or context to anything.

Yeah it can help you bust through a plateau maybe, but if you’re already killing it with jhanas and such there’d be no need, therefore I’ll assume you haven’t attained jhana, and as such I’d recommend following an established technique like TMI for at least a 1 hour sit every day. Jhana isn’t awakening but it sure as fuck makes whatever you’re not doing seem laughable if you do in fact attain it. It’s obscenely pleasant. So what? But if you feel you’re lacking well-being in meditation, I would recommend doing what you can to manifest 1st jhana if you haven’t already.

Meaningful suffering is an illusion though. But yes, you’re right in that “what is” does not give a fuck about “you.”

Oh I see it the same way now. I don’t see suffering in that way at all. I’m just channeling my past self who apparently did, and could relate to most people, so I assume most people experienced suffering in that way if they are still afflicted by the possibility of suffering in the future. Consciousness + suffering = impossible. So be conscious.

Liberation is not an experience. Does it feel like experience sort of turns inside out and you’re looking IN (rather than OUT) at experience from an infinite transcendent god-like nothingness? Nothing can touch you. You’re God. Awesome experience, right? If that’s the case, that’s “The Witness,” or the spacious mind, or the vastness of awareness. It ain’t the true self, because there isn’t one. Yeah total liberation could happen when doing literally anything, but if you’re trying for the goal of self inquiry (Realization) it usually takes 6-24 months for one to realize they’re done. Just trying to give an indication of the diligence required.

Yeah, the ego says it wants truth but can’t possibly want it, because truth is the ego’s absence. I don’t recommend it either, but I sure hope it happens more. It’s the most profoundly amazing awakening possible. Honestly I hope it happens by other means but I’m coming from a perspective that sees suffering as instrumental. Even if suffering isn’t instrumental, the diligence required practically counts as suffering, or at least luck.

Teachers are in the dream. There isn’t actually a dream though. Any “enlightened” teacher is only appearing to teach. There are no teachers. Ramana never taught anything. Have you ever performed self inquiry to its end? Just how many people do you think went through that ordeal? Not many. Anyone who actually did it was going to do it anyway, even if via literal suicide by gunshot to the head, which people do all the time. God would never stop the rape of a child, because there is only infinite everything. Infinity doesn’t just put things into perspective, it destroys any pretense of separation.

There’s just isness. I think the Buddhists call it rigpa? Idk I’m not a Buddhist but I used to follow that path and rigpa seems closest to no-self.

Low doses of acid amplify bodily tension like nothing else. Back in college living in dorms when I struggled with social anxiety I would get insanely intense contraction and pain in the chest if I didn’t dose high enough. When I dosed high I’d feel fine. Years later I became very sensitive to it though and there was basically no amount that I could take that would cause tension. It would just cause ego death or “glimpses” or whatever you wanna call it.

Until -example person- realizes this to be an oxymoron, spirituality, for them, is doomed.

If you are interested in self inquiry, just know it's a bit more intense than you might imagine. Look for the I. Every experience you have seems to occur to you; the I. Every single experience. So in the process, you'll maybe feel like you're sort of "catching the I" -- you never are. Once you realize this, it's easier to just rapid fire down the line disregarding literally everything until... Poof... Generally takes 6-24 months of all-day practice, amidst your daily activities, just so you know. And it's not even necessarily the liberation some of us talk about here.

After the I stops, it’s obvious that it’s gone, but it’s practically unrecognizable exactly what it is that’s gone — it just wasn’t ever there. It was an assumed receiver and cause of what’s arising, which seemed to make the arising seem real, but there was only ever just what’s arising. Nothing really changes, there’s just no one to know or get anything, like it always was. And nothing is real, including death.

Not quite, but for an arahat the piti flows smoothly in a circuit, isn't tumultuous, and doesn't cause one to cycle through the progress of insight. Rather than feeling weird stuff like euphoric explosions at the top of head, insomnia, mania, etc. In some cases I think bipolar may be a diagnosis that completely ignores all spiritual causes, such as piti/dark-night cycles. The newer field of transpersonal psychology may be addressing this kind of stuff, however. Arahatship is really just an amazingly fun toy, it's not liberation.

The mind is very busy and multi layered and delegated. When enough of these parts all do the same thing (pay attention to a certain group of sensations) it frees up a ton of energy as less is wasted on opposing intentions/desires, but before this energy has anywhere to go (in the form of samadhi states), it will be released as tumultuous energy currents that can be felt as painful or blissful, but generally quite intensely and eventually it almost certainly takes on the quality of exhilaration, before eventually calming down. That’s the general progression of piti/kundalini in skilled meditation. It’s the epitome of makyo in Zen though, lol. And it’s just a story.

Constant, sure. Permanent? No. Especially if the me dissolves a few times, or altogether — then there’s just “sitting in a room reading,” etc, or whatever seems to happen. Completely ordinary stuff — probably because the tendency for boredom and nostalgia is pretty much crushed in the germ.

No one gets anything. They only seem to get things. There's always another layer. Always, meaning ultimately, never. It's empty, which is full.

@Moksha Amen.

I'd say it's an auspicious sign that science and mysticism came full circle, not that it wasn't always that way in a sense. There is only ______.

Words cannot express my simultaneous condolences and solidarity

The closest you'll get to an answer is what's already been described in this thread. When it's mind vs what is, mind always wins.