The0Self

You don’t visit awakening from a dream. You visit a dream from awakening. What starts, ends. What does not start, does not end.

Try the latter. Sounds more fun. But it might eventually be recognized that the answers are actually distracting from the true answer, which is only ever to be found in the questions themselves. Perfect your questions, and you’ll get the real answers — but you don’t need to go there yet... you can actually focus on the answers for a while at first but just be aware that the answers are not where the truth is to be found. It may seem that writing notes and “showing your work” is a waste of time and distracts from meditation. Or maybe that meditation is a waste and distracts from working through answers intellectually. Neither are true.

In one sense, you’re either awake or you’re not. But we wouldn’t really be talking about what you think of as you. But there can seem to be degrees of understanding of and openness to awakening, and a good depiction of that is the 10 ox herding pictures. As to how deeply one can awaken? All the way, of course.

At the most final of all “why” questions, what could really be expected other than “is.”

Why not? It’s either start and end, or never start and never end.

The answer is not what you’re looking for. The question is. Answers would all be distractions for one if it were possible for that one to want to know the true answer. “Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.” - Meister Eckhart

You sure it's not some form of kratom use doing that or at least contributing?

Solipsism, if defined as the view that nothing can be known aside from what seems to be, whatever that is... is basically a correct view. Solipsism as it’s colloquially defined distracts from that reality, as it seems many define it in terms like “I am the only human being that exists,” or “my mental state is the only one and there aren’t (even just apparently) others like me.” So if people speak as if solipsism is true, maybe don’t aloofly out dismiss it out of hand. They might just be referring to unknowing, which is the truth. I don’t know though. From the perspective of liberation, even the belief that you actually live as a human being on a planet called earth, in a universe... would essentially be seen as: as deep an entrenchment in delusion as someone who believes and apparently knows they’re a fundamentalist Christian.

If there is no actual separate soul, then anything that involves it is a dream. There aren't any limits to what can be imagined to happen in a dream. Therefore, reincarnation can be real while not being absolutely true.

@Nadosa @RMQualtrough Yeah mindfulness and steadiness of attention can be very powerful against mental disorders. But sometimes, spirituality as a whole, and viewing society itself as one big conspiracy (which it pretty much is), can perhaps be exacerbating of such conditions. Although if taken all the way, it leads to a very radical form of sanity.

@gettoefl The thread is manly pointing out how many people don't use the actual definition. Solipsism is the view that nothing more than the self (or consciousness) can be known to exist for certain... Which is both falsifiable (just prove that anything exists) and hasn't been falsified (nothing has been proven to exist apart from consciousness). The whole self inquiry process of unknowing or holding onto the clue of 'I am' is basically just holding onto the clue of solipsism. But I think we'd agree the strawmen of solipsism are certainly just more beliefs -- some might actually believe it though, so it's not even necessarily a strawman for colloquial solipsism... But if we take it to be the view that nothing more than the self (or consciousness) can be known to exist for certain, I'd say that's pretty obvious. It certainly doesn't mean that only one person exists lol. There is no actual person.

Unconditional-happiness as well as uncontrived-compassion are concepts that point to the unrecognizable perfection that is everything already.

Hid a comment that seemed incongruent with the discussion upon seeing posts that I’d missed. Thought I’d be able to unhide them but apparently not lol.

Guess I should’ve included the phrase “so to speak.”

It’s all good. The further context, however, is that I already discussed this with him earlier in PM. So it’s already too late on the one hand, and on the other he didn’t seem to be exhibiting any serious existential rumination. At least nowhere nearly as bad as I did or as badly as it would have to seem for me to shut up about it. At least not at the time. I’m certainly not saying I’m right and you’re wrong though.

Your description of “what he means” is simply not true, first of all, but I also doubt it’s what Leo means. There isn’t anything at all that exists. No one is separate. And there is literally no reality, in truth. Solipsism need not worry you, as infinity holds infinite infinities. Even though you’re alone floating in empty eternity as everything timelessly forever (and not even that), it doesn’t mean the dream can’t apparently have real others — even with their own apparent inner lives. ?

That would be irrelevant to whether or not evil exists as anything remotely resembling a concrete entity. People are all the same. Only the circumstances change. Your disposition is a circumstance. Not everyone has the same conscience anyway, but that’s beside the point. Something seeming to be better or worse than something else is real but not true — preferring one over the other still can happen even when there’s no delusion left. What do you think awake people go around seeking to do the exact opposite of what they prefer to do?

How exactly would this prove that evil is not real? The question is not whether or not evil is real. If it's real to you, it's real to you -- but that doesn't mean it's true. You can't even prove that anything exists, besides truth (or consciousness if you prefer to call it that) which has no discernible attributes other than "true," and requires no proof.

This is not a state that I'm in. It's certainly not what I wished for, but there's nothing wrong with it. There never was an experiencer. The ability to enter jhanas is not related to no-self, they're just really, really fun toys. I haven't had the compulsion to try to enter jhana for quite some time now.

The syllogistics are maximally simple: If I am, and everything is all there is, then I am everything.

Well, yeah. All the me knows is that it is. And that knowing is illusory, as there isn't actually something that knows.

For real... ? The reason for the thread was basically everyone who, I can only assume, doesn’t know the established definition of solipsism, which is quite obviously just the way it is.

Especially with psychedelics, there can be all sorts of awesome experiences and peeks behind the curtain... Unity-consciousness, etc. Fun stuff, but yeah it can certainly be very scary seeing that the distinction between you and the entirety of existence is imaginary / has no substance! But this is a very ordered dream without real danger (but also without real safety) so there’s nothing really to fear, but in many cases of this sort of thing yeah terror is basically just par for the course. Ego-death and being God can seem to happen, at which point the fear is usually gone because it’s generally such an incredibly high state, but the “middle zones” can be quite terrifying and it can sort of follow a rule of “uncanny valley” where the closer you get to ego-death without fully getting there, the scarier it is. The advanced meditation paths of Buddhism, etc plan for this by recommending very good concentration and the ability to manifest bliss-on-demand so that any fear of emptiness is met with waves of overpowering bliss that kind of distract one from the fear or make them not particularly care. Even in the beginning I didn’t exactly think this was mere wishful thinking (if I did I probably wouldn’t have practiced much) — I had faith in the techniques — but until I started being able to enter jhanas, I really didn’t have any concrete basis for thinking it was anything other than make-believe... but bliss-on-demand can definitely be cultivated.

@Breakingthewall However, the dream world is (or at least very much seems to be) an apparent manifestation of infinite intelligence. It exists for no purpose (nor does it actually exist at all), but in a way that’s the same as saying the sole purpose is amusement. All it has as the vehicle for amusement is what you call you. Synchronicities and patterns and awe, gratitude, love, joy, bliss, meaning, and awesomeness and shittiness and all manner of diversity are the nature of the dream world. It’s interesting without limit, so that it can be interested without limit. Absolute freedom. All the intelligence there is, and this is what it imagines, selflessly. If it ain’t quite awesome, look a little harder (open your eyes), and trust it; trust the flow; trust feeling. Nothing is hidden unless something being hidden is part of the unified whole or, dare I say, the plan. It is ultimately without meaning, purpose, and even actuality, but it is ordered in a way that makes purpose not only really easy to find, but also easy to forgo.

No reason. And no one would want to, aside from not being able to resist doing so, again for no reason, or maybe an aversion to untruth. The actual difference between anything is a dream. Rough visualization essentially for entertainment purposes only: Imagine two spheres occupying the exact same space (it's a rough example, because to do this accurately you'd have to, impossibly, imagine them prior to space and time). One is, the other is not. One does not appear, the other does appear. The one that is, happens to be the one that does not appear. So all appearance is not, and yet... it of course also is, simply because the sphere that is not, is not separate from the sphere that is. The sphere that is, is all that is, and therefore there isn't anything separate from it.