Preetom

None of that was thrown at you exclusively! That's why I used 'we' so heavily lol Take care!

Out of thousands of people that follow Actualized, few grow up feeding Leo's contents and motivation, become some zen devil at some point, then come back to bite Leo's ass and leech off Actualized.org to further promote their agendas. oh such irony Don't come fighting your daddy who made you sonny

Why do you persist on naming that which is? After the disillusionment of subject-object consciousness, there can be no distinction or duality or category like inside vs outside, existence vs non-existence, awareness vs unawareness, life vs death etc. Any thing said from there is really nothing but non sense. So let me just shut up here. Take care!

No. To call oneself as that is already saying one thing too much.

@Emanyalpsid After one has clearly seen through the illusion of perception aka subject-object consciousness, the very term 'consciousness/awareness' becomes redundant. Consciousness? As opposed to what? Ta da! Now talk all you may from there. Where are you going, bro?

You're welcome. Take care!

This is such a pernicious and naive outlook. Like really! Why are we so obsessed with 'external' validations? Why do we expect a third party appearing and delivering the message that we are God? Why don't we realize that our own mind/ego/subject/perception is ALL there is and any such third party would be another projection of our own minds? Just like you mentioned that every night you take on a new body and new story in dreams. Can you ever know whether those are your past/future life memory or not? No! How can you know? Are you waiting for a 3rd party to pop all that mystery? Wouldn't that 3rd party itself be part of that mystery? The 'if only' complains just show how unimaginative, rigid and epistemically myopic species we are in general. The clues are all over the place for Christ's sake. Nonono. It's more like ''I've already made up my mind but calling it observation. so f*ck you''. What do you call a dimension when you don't find any limit to it?

Then why are you jumping to conclusions about your experience being finite? Why don't you patiently observe your experience? Do you really have legitimate proofs of calling your experience finite/limited? Can you point out a place where your perception starts and a place where it ends? Can you legitimately point out when your own being starts in time and when it leaves in your direct experience? Why are you declaring your experience as finite based on hearsay and groundless assumptions provided by the contents of thought? thank you

Are you open to the possibility that you might be mistakenly translating an infinite experience as finite all this time?

That's actually a very eye opening example. Who would want to make that so called 'better' use of 500k$? Only a limited entity with finite resources. Who wouldn't give a shit about that 500k$ so much so that he/she could dump it in fire and then jump into it as well? Only a deathless, infinite being with infinite intelligence, greatness and potential for whom that 500k$ is nothing compared to it's own totality. And all of it with no real consequence. Now choose which side you wanna be.

Layers and layers of psychological, emotional and physical pain is inevitable in any deconstruction spiritual work. Ego is nothing but all these accumulated stories and constricted feelings woven together. Every deconstruction wounds that hodge podge, thus it retorts and fires back to maintain it's own survival. Sometimes it fires back with a fury/backlash, other times it just bums out the intellect with vague and chronic dissatisfaction and pain(which is harder to spot and cope with in a sense). The remedy is to know and expect this dynamic from the beginning. And when shit hits the fan, perseverance and letting go technique is your best friend. Good luck

omg that was soo funny How can anyone read that and still maintain a gloomy face? Isn't it a miracle that you can make a joke out of this hell? If you were absolutely bound in hell, would you have the freedom of thinking along these lines?

Actually I've thought about it. The truth of the matter is, Enlightenment is happening every instance. Right now! But alas! Most of us are having a really grotesque and mistaken translation of this godly 'experience' moment to moment. Let me 1st explain with an analogy. When we are watching a movie, we are only looking at a flat screen. That's it! That's all we are looking at in reality. But yet, we 'choose' to only see the drama and content of the movie. We wanna conjure up all this false sense of time, story, laughter, suffering, characters where in fact all we are looking at is a contentless, unchanging screen. Just notice how the way of looking can distinguish between Actuality and ignorant imagination. Sounds boring huh? Now let's bring it down in our own lives. ANY and ALL phenomena/experience, first and foremost inform us the presence of impersonal, non-located, unlimited, eternal Awareness. BUT, we are trying so hard deliberately(or not) to ignore this constant truth of our experience. Instead, we are mistakenly translating this very enlightening experience as stories of ourselves as people who were born, inhabiting a body, married to so and so, doing so and so, with a past and going to another future time, gonna die in the future, engrossed in pleasures and pains of life etc and etc. So whose fault is it? Is it a person's fault or is it the fault of the translation/perspective? ''Perspective is EVERYTHING''- Sunyamurti ''Right now I'm telling you about your real, unborn nature. But you don't see it because you prefer to be that monkey form!''- Nisargadatta Maharaj

@Viking Why do you ask for validation for your own happiness and values from others? If you are genuinely happy with things you are doing, why bother seeking validation from others? I'm asking these questions because developing a false image of perfectionism and what you 'should' do in life can be a very common trap in this self-improvement business. That's a potent recipe for permanent frustration. Instead, just look at your own life and contemplate how things are going for you. Like really. Take care

Start questioning everything you already know for sure. Inquire into how and when and on what basis you started to take all this knowledge for granted as truth. Contemplative journaling helps a lot in this regard. When your current paradigms and assumptions are weakened at their base, you will naturally crave for something 'real' and genuinely 'true' in your life. As for books to really shake you up, read the Enlightenment trilogy of Jed Mckenna

if you mean manipulating phenomena, then sure the mind has no clue what science will be able to accomplish in next 2000 years. Science is all about study and manipulation of phenomena, something whose existence isn't recognized by Absolute Consciousness in the first place.

@Emanyalpsid By consciousness, if you mean the subject-object consciousness, then indeed that is the primary illusion. This very subject-object consciousness with which we have all our perception is indeed the ego. This egoic consciousness mimics the presence of real Consciousness whose true nature is not knowing any other object but only knowing it's own being. Knowing oneself not being this subject-object consciousness is indeed the final transcendence aka Nirvana aka Brahman. This state is called ajata, where there is no universe, ego, consciousness, categories like existence or non-existence etc in the first place

No matter how evolved science gets, it will never be possible to objectify or manipulate Consciousness. I mean absolute Consciousness, not the subject-object human consciousness.

But too bad scientists will never 'it'. They are looking for that which enables the very act of looking

@bazera Set out a 5 days self inquiry retreat at home. Every single day, just sit casually in your study desk and self-inquire for 10-12 hours. No one will even suspect that you are doing anything weird. Preferably do 30 minutes sessions followed by 5 minutes of walking (don't make your legs and waist sore). By the end of 3rd or 4th day, you should have a very palpable, unforgettable and 'clean' non-dual glimpse. You'll easily see why you should work towards this mode of being. For the first time, you may encounter unmixed happiness. Also the good news is, the effects would last few days to weeks if it's a sufficiently powerful breakthrough. You may have mini glimpses here and there from day 1, but don't stop until it hit you like a thunderbolt and spontaneously stops all self-inquiry and activity. You'll know when it hits you. The technique of Self-Inquiry: Step 1: Relinquish all your interest and fascination from all objects of experience and try to 'focus' on the subject. Take the help of questions like ''who is aware?'', ''Who is the perceiver?'' Step 2: Any 'thing' you land on as yourself, clearly see that it is an object. Thus continue inquiring..''who is aware of that?'' Repeat...until the breakthrough comes. There is absolutely no need to think or try to figure out stuff from your part. In the end, the key is solid determination to maintain this routine for 5 days without giving in to everyday distractions. The breakthrough is bound to happen if you put in the hours and don't stop the inquiry half-way by imagining yourself as a located object/body.

Can you tell us more about this 'no-thing'?

It will be game over down the line. That's the last thing the game would want.

would you say that you are a blank?

Because, Being bored=Not seeing what is and subsequently seeing/imagining/forcing what is not. In other words, it is a Consciousness issue

that's the issue. One is bound in the idea of pleasure-pain cycle unless consciousness reaches a breakthrough tipping point