The0Self

It's not precisely that you have forgotten that you are God. Rather, in the story, God (boundlessness; truth) is imagining what it would be like to forget that it is God if it were God (thereby imagining itself into existence apparently; but don't forget, there's no it), through infinite intelligence, appearing as a game with illusory aspects. So there isn't really a you, as there's no self-reference, duality, or actuality. This is the distinction between waking up in the dream and waking up from the dream. Upon waking up from the dream, it would never even occur that God (or anything) has any actuality, because there's no duality, only emptiness without limit (i.e. not even that). God is self-creating and therefore empty of self-existence. It's unreal yet paradoxically it's the only reality -- there's no it. Truth is, while untruth is not, and whatever manifests, is not.

It's the end of the illusory sense of I, and yet you could say the I might as well remain, because the illusion was never actually there. It's not even a real paradox but it can certainly seem like one. Reality has no substance. A dream has no need to make sense. If anything, the awake see the not-awake as NPC's (perfection appearing as NPC's), since only for the not-awake would there be the idea that there's someone inside controlling a body.

Not at all, there's just aliveness. "Empty fullness." The ordinary is not distinguishable from the extraordinary. Just no one trying to get anywhere and nowhere to get to -- this is all there is. Just typing on a computer, drinking water, etc appearing to happen, but for no one separate from that. Certainly the collapse of any beliefs in the materialist paradigm -- they'd be long gone. To tell you the truth though that all assumes she didn't pass away -- I don't know if she's still alive. Probably not hard to find out but it's irrelevant anyway. It would have been recognized that there isn't anything outside of what appears to be happening, and it's not appearing for anyone. It's whole and complete. Whatever appears is not even "something that truly does appear." There isn't something that actually appears. There's only truth which never changes. It's not graspable and yet it's supremely simple (the problem though, is that it's really too simple to get). The appearance isn't necessarily going to appear simple, but the appearance is not other than the absolute, which is irreducible; singular; attribute-less... It's as if the emotional machinery designed to keep one from recognizing that they're the entirety of existence, all alone, floating through perfect infinite absolute emptiness forever... fails to do its job.

Well, in a sense, there's no Bernadette... But the body gets along just fine without an experiencer inside it. It's just the end of dualistic, subject-object awareness.

Very instructive material on God from the perspective of fully transitioning from awakening or God-consciousness, to enlightenment, or in her terminology, God to Godhead; a great read: https://o-meditation.com/2009/10/16/from-the-unitive-state-to-no-self-bernadette-roberts/ After enlightenment there's no inner world or outer divine anymore. Excerpt: Stephan: How did you discover the further stage, which you call the experience of no-self? Bernadette: That occurred unexpectedly some 25 years after the transforming process. The divine center – the coin, or “true self” – suddenly disappeared, and without center or circumference there is no self, and no divine. Our subjective life of experience is over – the passage is finished. I had never heard of such a possibility or happening. Obviously there is far more to the elusive experience we call self than just the ego. The paradox of our passage is that we really do not know what self or consciousness is, so long as we are living it, or are it. The true nature of self can only be fully disclosed when it is gone, when there is no self. One outcome, then, of the no-self experience is the disclosure of the true nature of self or consciousness. As it turns out, self is the entire system of consciousness, from the unconscious to God-consciousness, the entire dimension of human knowledge and feeling-experience. Because the terms “self” and “consciousness” express the same experiences (nothing can be said of one that cannot be said of the other), they are only definable in the terms of “experience”. Every other definition is conjecture and speculation. No-self, then, means no-consciousness. If this is shocking to some people, it is only because they do not know the true nature of consciousness. Sometimes we get so caught up in the content of consciousness, we forget that consciousness is also a somatic function of the physical body, and, like every such function, it is not eternal. Perhaps we would do better searching for the divine in our bodies than amid the content and experience of consciousness. Stephan: How does one move from “transforming union” to the experience of no-self? What is the path like? Bernadette: We can only see a path in retrospect. Once we come to the state of oneness, we can go no further with the inward journey. The divine center is the innermost “point”, beyond which we cannot go at this time. Having reached this point, the movement of our journey turns around and begins to move outward – the center is expanding outward. To see how this works, imagine self, or consciousness, as a circular piece of paper. The initial center is the ego, the particular energy we call “will” or volitional faculty, which can either be turned outward, toward itself, or inward, toward the divine ground, which underlies the center of the paper. When, from our side of consciousness, we can do no more to reach this ground, the divine takes the initiative and breaks through the center, shattering the ego like an arrow shot through the center of being. The result is a dark hole in ourselves and the feeling of terrible void and emptiness. This breakthrough demands a restructuring or change of consciousness, and this change is the true nature of the transforming process. Although this transformation culminates in true human maturity, it is not man’s final state. The whole purpose of oneness is to move us on to a more final state. To understand what happens next, we have to keep cutting larger holes in the paper, expanding the center until only the barest rim or circumference remains. One more expansion of the divine center and the boundaries of consciousness or self fall away. From this illustration we can see how the ultimate fulfillment of consciousness, or self, is no-consciousness, or no-self. The path from oneness to no-oneness is an egoless one and is therefore devoid of ego-satisfaction. Despite the unchanging center of peace and joy, the events of life may not be peaceful or joyful at all. With no ego-gratification at the center and no divine joy on the surface, this part of the journey is not easy. Heroic acts of selflessness are required to come to the end of self, acts comparable to cutting ever-larger holes in the paper – acts, that is, that bring no return to the self whatsoever. The major temptation to be overcome in this period is the temptation to fall for one of the subtle but powerful archetypes of the collective consciousness. As I see it, in the transforming process we only come to terms with the archetypes of the personal unconscious; the archetypes of the collective consciousness are reserved for individuals in the state of oneness, because those archetypes are powers or energies of that state. Jung felt that these archetypes were unlimited; but in fact, there is only one true archetype, and that archetype is self. What is unlimited are the various masks or roles self is tempted to play in the state of oneness – savior, prophet, healer, martyr, Mother Earth, you name it. They are all temptations to seize power for ourselves, to think ourselves to be whatever the mask or role may be. In the state of oneness, both Christ and Buddha were tempted in this manner, but they held to the “ground” that they knew to be devoid of all such energies. This ground is a “stillpoint”, not a moving energy-point. Unmasking these energies, seeing them as ruses of the self, is the particular task to be accomplished or hurdle to be overcome in the state of oneness. We cannot come to the ending of self until we have finally seen through these archetypes and can no longer be moved by any of them. So the path from oneness to no-oneness is a life that is choicelessly devoid of ego-satisfaction; a life of unmasking the energies of self and all the divine roles it is tempted to play. It is hard to call this life a “path”, yet it is the only way to get to the end of our journey. Stephan: In The Experience of No-Self you talk at great length about your experience of the dropping away or loss of self. Could you briefly describe this experience and the events that led up to it? I was particularly struck by your statement “I realized I no longer had a ‘within’ at all.” For so many of us, the spiritual life is experienced as an “inner life” – yet the great saints and sages have talked about going beyond any sense of inwardness. Bernadette: Your observation strikes me as particularly astute; most people miss the point. You have actually put your finger on the key factor that distinguishes between the state of oneness and the state of no-oneness, between self and no-self. So long as self remains, there will always be a “center”. Few people realize that not only is the center responsible for their interior experiences of energy, emotion, and feeling, but also, underlying these, the center is our continuous, mysterious experience of “life” and “being”. Because this experience is more pervasive than our other experiences, we may not think of “life” and “being” as an interior experience. Even in the state of oneness, we tend to forget that our experience of “being” originates in the divine center, where it is one with divine life and being. We have become so used to living from this center that we feel no need to remember it, to mentally focus on it, look within, or even think about it. Despite this fact, however, the center remains; it is the epicenter of our experience of life and being, which gives rise to our experiential energies and various feelings. If this center suddenly dissolves and disappears, the experiences of life, being, energy, feeling and so on come to an end, because there is no “within” any more. And without a “within”, there is no subjective, psychological, or spiritual life remaining – no experience of life at all. Our subjective life is over and done with. But now, without center and circumference, where is the divine? To get hold of this situation, imagine consciousness as a balloon filled with, and suspended in divine air. The balloon experiences the divine as immanent, “in” itself, as well as transcendent, beyond or outside itself. This is the experience of the divine in ourselves and ourselves in the divine; in the state of oneness, Christ is often seen as the balloon (ourselves), completing this trinitarian experience. But what makes this whole experience possible – the divine as both immanent and transcendent – is obviously the balloon, i.e. consciousness or self. Consciousness sets up the divisions of within and without, spirit and matter, body and soul, immanent and transcendent; in fact, consciousness is responsible for every division we know of. But what if we pop the balloon – or better, cause it to vanish like a bubble that leaves no residue. All that remains is divine air. There is no divine in anything, there is no divine transcendence or beyond anything, nor is the divine anything. We cannot point to anything or anyone and say, “This or that is divine”. So the divine is all – all but consciousness or self, which created the division in the first place. As long as consciousness remains however, it does not hide the divine, nor is it ever separated from it. In Christian terms, the divine known to consciousness and experienced by it as immanent and transcendent is called God; the divine as it exists prior to consciousness and after consciousness is gone is called Godhead. Obviously, what accounts for the difference between God and Godhead is the balloon or bubble – self or consciousness. As long as any subjective self remains, a center remains; and so, too, does the sense of interiority.

@johnlocke18 Yeah I certainly didn’t mean to come off as disagreeing-with or negating anything you said. That all looks good to me. Fwiw.

@johnlocke18 ? But in one sense you’d have to say enlightenment isn’t necessarily “beyond” god realization, because enlightenment is entirely outside that axis of development — if anything, awake is on a non-axis without gradations. Either you experience time and space and context to be real, or enlightenment has happened in the story and so that’s all seen straight through, as (so to speak) simply non-relative infinite voidness without limit; a play of energy or unbounded dream stuff with absolutely no ultimate actuality to it other than the fact that it’s a false (as in has no substance) and unknowable appearance of the truly un-not-knowable infinite. Sort of ? Expanding consciousness through mystical union, cosmic consciousness, being everyone (etc), realization of god, and whatever else, is within the dream; enlightenment is without it. Who would want enlightenment though? Only those who can’t stand to play the game anymore, and are averse to the ego more than they fear death. It’s all wholeness anyway and all the conflict and expansion of consciousness and mystery is kind of the point.

Yes. However, any relative understanding of God, is no understanding of God at all.

The most comprehensive blueprints I've found are The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa, and Seeing That Frees by Rob Burbea.

What has no other.

End of belief. Permanent destruction of the illusory sense of personal doership. Unrealization of the untrue. Timeless non-relative consciousness. Death of separate I/mind; end of separation. Non-other-ness.

That makes sense unless one actually looks up the definition -- it states that solipsism is "the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist." That is true. It doesn't mean there aren't apparently others, just that their actuality is unknowable.

Not really. “What seems to be” just means (non-relative, undefined) consciousness. Relative to objects, this would just be “I am” — no other absolute knowledge is possible. Any other seemingly actual knowledge, including causality, context, time, space, universe, or anything else, is simply belief. Might as well believe things that help you get by (willing suspension of disbelief), but they are just beliefs.

Perhaps. Well, definitely, yeah. The reason I posted this is that I remember many of my awakenings and how the later ones were for the most part very solipsistic. That’s all. It’s not even really a pointer. Not exactly trying to help anyone. The only thing that’s going to do anyone any good in the realm of enlightenment is basically total fearlessness in the face of fear, and true solipsism is rather scary to an individual.

Seeming just means consciousness or I am. It’s just that until knowing drops, I am will refer to something unreal-yet-believed-in, yet after liberation it will just be referring to nothing at all really, except for your character, since it’s all you’ve got.

Even if there is a sort of reincarnation, I take it you probably don’t remember your previous life, right? If that’s the case, then you probably won’t remember this one — i.e. it will be like you never existed, if you do reincarnate, though in that case of course “you” reincarnating is a bit nonsensical.

Don’t worry about enlightenment. Maybe just give one of the full meditative paths a shot. Enlightenment is pointless and can only happen if you absolutely can’t resist incinerating everything so that not even a single belief remains — not even that you’re a human living on earth, in “the universe.”

This is precisely the sort of thing that ripped the materialist paradigm right out from under me. I was diagnosed with narcolepsy when I was 19 and started having this type of precognition type stuff happen in dreams. Can’t really think of any examples but what was even more compelling were the astral projections I was having — literally walking and flying around my neighborhood. In a dream, nothing is impossible, and that’s the only playground we have. Nothing is too mind blowing to take place.

1. more experience 2. upping the dose 3. (this one is perhaps most important but you can’t choose it) obsession about what is ultimately true and coming to terms with the fact that you have no idea what it is and you’re not happy about that one bit 4. gently coming to terms with solipsism — as ego-death is highly, highly suggestive of solipsism, and if you’re afraid of that, it could maybe be holding you back Maybe... I don’t really know for certain. It depends on the person, it seems.

Ultimately? What IS, is right... Or, there is no right or wrong. Right for you, on the other hand, is true for you, and you can use positive feeling as an indicator that something is right for you, and negative feeling to avoid what is wrong for you. Not just base level pain/pleasure, but one working model one can use is deeply feeling into any thought about yourself, and if it makes you feel bad, then it’s untrue and wrong for you — you can then either act on its converse (right action), or abandon it (if you’re trying to find the untruth-unrealized state, i.e. liberation from all ego and all belief).

^^ @aetheroar Yeah as I stated above, I really didn’t hear any recommendation lol. I guess it could be taken that way. I agree with your sentiment otherwise, if we were talking about someone intentionally recommending hardcore psychedelic use.

Perhaps. I would never recommend psychedelics and yet... I used a whole fucking lot of them... and it was a somewhat fundamental part of my path when I used them. But the solipsism was absolutely insane (only at the “time,” of course), yet undeniable. Leo is perhaps just braver than I to recommend them. Also... ? I think he was just saying basically that (1 month of) psychedelics will do a lot more than a bunch of sober practice... I don’t necessarily hear any recommendation in what he said unless I read into it a certain way and settle on a particular meaning.

Which is a thought. It’s a strange loop. By thought, in this context I really just mean experience. There is no thought. No universe. Only what is, which can appear as a dream. Awakening is the un-realization of the false, after a deconstruction process that begins with the realization that you and everything and everyone you know is only an appearance with no actuality — “truth exists, and this isn’t it.” Then when that deconstruction is finished, everything is seen straight through and no one is there to really be distracted anymore from the underlying reality that “I” am floating in paradise; empty infinite eternity, without other. Everything dual is illusory. Relationships appear but aren’t actual.

Here’s the actual method, but you’re already whole so it would just be to pass time and play while tricking yourself into thinking that you’re serious about letting go of the story (getting enlightened). Ask: Who...or what... am I? What is me? What can be known to be true? It should quickly be obvious that the only thing I can know is that I am. Because I can’t be sure of anything. You can do this meditatively with self inquiry by just withdrawing attention from all object by trying to find the subject of whatever appears to you. This can be done at all times if you’re serious, and whenever you’re not doing it, notice what you’re doing... there will at that time be an engrossment in the story — so you identify it and withdraw from that too. Repeat until nothing is left to know except [I AM]... but that will never happen because once there is no non-[I AM] object, there’s no I AM either. But if you just want to play around with some techniques that make you feel better in “this” life (there isn’t really anyone with a life, much less is there another life), Metta and dedicated and relaxed very-still meditation generally seemed to work nicely for me...well, for this character/ego-suit, anyway.

No one exists but you. And you... are only a thought. Alone in empty eternity. It’s so obvious it’s impossible to not see... Unless... you imagine a space-time universe that you traverse with an emotional system and an ego to keep the dream meaningful, and you imagine that things can begin and end. When that illusion drops, after a long and painstaking journey, there is simply everything; ALL there is, for no one. Simplicity. Anything else is a dream.