Preetom

@now is forever Love is the dissolution of the subject-object relationship. Totally. Love is the end of all relationships. When the distinction between the lover and the beloved ceases, that is the 'experience' of Love. That's the 'baseline' experience to all experiences before ego arises up and creates the illusion of subject-object duality. In fact, it's not baseline but that's all there is to experience. Conventionally what is called love in society is a distinct subject trying to hoard another distinct object in order to fulfill itself.

Also these 'qualities' are mind's knowledge/interpretation/model of the Absolute. These words don't really mean anything. The Absolute doesn't need to know and be itself through these words. From it's own experience, it just IS. Eternal, infinite, unborn, omnipresent, knower of all...as opposed to what? The Absolute doesn't know any such contrast.

Exactly! Can't be known in the conventional subject-object relationship. Thus it's called the end of knowledge. But yet, it IS and you are THAT. The Absolute's way of knowing itself is just being itself. Just the the Sun's way of illuminating itself is just being itself. The Sun doesn't need a 2nd object to reflect it's light to illumine itself.

Thank god I made it before the thread is closed!! @ZX_man Does this thread ring some bells? How is the Enlightnement thing kicking so far? @winterknight I have few questions. I'm not questioning your Enlightenment. Please just honestly answer these questions as you feel right now. 1) Are you 'aware' of deep sleep? 2) Do you really 'see' any actual, experiential difference between deep sleep and waking state? Or do your 'deep sleep' continues for 24/7? 3) Do you see any 'objects'? How would you define any objective experience from your current understanding? 4) Where are 'you' located in your direct experience now? 5) What is your experience of 'Time'? How do you see Time now? 6) Do you find any 'distance' between any'thing' and 'yourself'? 7) Can you stop thinking right now? Upon doing that, what's your actual experience about this event of stopping thought? Who stopped thinking? Who is in control? 8) What was the defining moment when you realized ''this is it! I'm done". Was it any particular insight? Any emotional charge or mystical highs involved? 9) Do you find yourself parroting non dual truths like ''there is no doer, there is no suffering, there is no me'' when shit hits the fan or is your mind silent because you're actually grounded in these non dual truths experientially? 10) Do you find yourself becoming MORE and MORE 'Enlightened' by the passing days, weeks, months? PS: I didn't either ask about your verification for Enlightenment or about your path. I hope you answer these questions. I want you to just look at yourself right now and answer from there. Thank you!

Why do you let a thought superimpose it's own limitations on Consciousness? Is it a thought that knows? No! Only Awareness knows. Why do you take the authority of thought as something truthful? Did you really have to post this?? I mean...how will I unsee this shit now?

@How to be wise You've taped into one of the two primal functions of the separate self. 1) Fear of disappearance/death (Fear) 2) Constant sense of lack and search for completeness/happiness (Desire) There is no separate self without these two functions. In fact, the separate self is not an independent entity but these 2 very activities are the separate self! At this point, there is no way around. Only a way through!!!! You're finally seeing the separate self as it really is! No rationalization or fooling yourself will work in the long run

You can avoid traps if you don't have the wrong expectations from the wrong things. A screwdriver is a great tool. It has it's functions. But the delusion and problems start if you expect that this screwdriver will cook breakfast for you every morning as well! Science is founded upon a groundless assumption that there is an absolute, objective world out there made of matter. A system that is founded upon assumption can never reach Truth. Our waking state is a persistent dream. That's why science is necessary to study and predict the persistent patterns of this dream. In a constantly whacky dream, there is no science. That inconsistency itself becomes the norm. Reminds me of an analogy I heard from Peter Ralston. Absolute Reality/Consciousness is like a ghost that won't show itself directly. But you can intuit the presence of this ghost by the activities it induces i.e. making a mark on wall, dropping something hung on the wall, dropping something from the table etc. Now lets say you really wanna know more about this ghost but you're spending all your time studying and cracking these whacky events. Would you know something Truthful about the ghost? No! You'll only keep getting better and better at interpreting the 'activities' of this ghost. You can compare this analogy with what's going on in brain science in the name of Consciousness studies. They aren't really studying Consciousness. They are studying brain waves but conflating it as the study of Consciousness. Also about this notion of an external world made of 'matter', it's like having an attitude like this, ''We haven't yet found the boogyman. But we strongly believe and intuit there is a boogyman. We just need few more decades and finer instruments to look and then boogyman will be found guaranteed! But in the meantime, let's study the activity, life cycle, mating habits etc of boogyman! Don't worry!! Boogyman will be found! No need to question the existence of boogyman, let's just study it's activities as if it really exists!'' With that being said, science is great and interesting. I feel that studying science has great potential to stabilize the mind and also appreciate this dream in a newfound way compared to chasing other things.

Having said that I'll share the most effective and ruthlessly simple 3 step strategy for building concentration as prescribed by Swami Vivekananda. 1) Decide what you're gonna concentrate on. 2) concentrate on that 3) Immediately bring back your focus on the object of your concentration the moment you first notice that your attention has wandered away. There should not be any introspection or judgement involved in where, why, how, when your focus drifted away. Just bring it back the moment you notice your focus got diverted. Repeat...repeat...repeat...that's concentration building over time.

1) simplify life. Only do a set of activities regularly. Minimize distractions. Just resting in the free time is a way better strategy. 2) watch your thoughts. Make sure you aren't investing too much thoughts in worrying and daydreaming about situations. Also notice if you're always investing in living up to a certain self image or patterns you have. These are huge energy drainers. Hope you get some ideas for your solution

@lmfao I see it like this. Pre-Egoic State(Newborn babies and animals) <---> Ego <---> Post-Egoic State(All consciously Enlightened people) Both pre-egoic and post-egoic are Enlightenment in the sense that there is no separate self apart from the totality of nature, but there are qualitative differences. In the post-egoic Enlightenment, higher functions of nature like intuition, higher reasoning, creativity etc can manifest itself. But in pre-egoic state, mostly it is limited within survival instinct. If we look it at this way, it's quite clear that all separate selves are moving towards to dissolve the separateness. It doesn't matter which direction it takes, animalistic pursuits or higher consciousness pursuits. This is exactly why Ego can't stand still in present moment. It must be on a movement. In fact, the ego is not an entity but this very activity or movement. A person can pursue animalistic tendencies and devolve continuously into an animal (probably as an animal rebirth). Or he can pursue higher Consciousness and reach post egoic Enlightenment.

It's because language itself is found to be groundless and part of the appearance if it is poked enough times haha...

@lmfao You've landed on a powerful insight. All of experience is just an appearance of Consciousness/Absolute. It is all effortless and causeless precisely because it's all an appearance. There is no ultimate engine driving it. Here are some ideas that came up while reading your post. You might see a scene of galactic explosion, a play of innumerable energy on TV screen. But on TV screen it's only an appearance and there is no energy involved. In appearance, there seems to be a linear time stretched in infinity but in experience it's always 'now'. In appearance, there seems to be infinite space in universe but in experience it's always 'here' In appearance it seems that everything is governed by causality, but in experience it's all ever anew. The more you poke 'reality', the more of a dream it presents itself as...causeless, flimsy appearance with absolutely nothing as it's substance Reality only looks like a 'thing' from the point of view of an individual subject/perceiver.

Have you noticed this yet? While dreaming, that dream feels legit reasonable. Flying, talking unicorns, sky shattering, monsters chasing, space/time shifts etc All of it feels real and reasonable. No one ever says "Why aren't things conforming to Newtonian Laws??? I REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE IN IT" It all feels whacky and unreasonable the moment when we contrast it with our waking state reasoning and interpretations. So from where does all our vanity come? Do we really 'do' anything? Or are we just fishes in the sea, swimming (more like getting swum) along the torrents but deluding ourselves with the idea that we are producing and maintaining the hydrodynamics of the sea?

Give us a shout out whether you like it or not

@Rilles I remember reading along these lines in a Eckhart Tolle book. Basically, enlightened people are the most 'unpredictable' species. Even an enlightened fella him/herself doesn't have any preconceived notion about what he/she will or will not do in any situation. That's what makes enlightenment totally spontaneous and authentic. It never leaves any trace and excess junk of personhood, beliefs, guilt, shame, doership etc. Like a perfect fuel, the action of the enlightened burns completely leaving nothing behind. In the fight situation, the body might definitely protect itself. But there wouldn't be any reaction or resistance to whatever that might come up.

I've read Rupert Spira's some other books. But most of them are written transcription of the guided meditations and lectures he gives on retreats. But this book ''The Nature of Consciousness'', he really put everything in his understanding to finish this masterpiece.

@Charlotte Yes that's the one @Rilles Do it! you won't regret it

Save yourself from all the unnecessary confusion. Note that confusion and not-knowing are not the same thing! Goes to the very heart of the limitation of thoughts.

Your worldview will change radically on 'these areas'. But it will not be like installing a set of beliefs and definitions. Or like upgrading your states from 70 to 100. Then see whether a thing can stand like before if it is actually seen in a new light. That's something you'd have to go to that 'place' and see for yourself.

That's your call. You might have a few extra senses I don't have. But that doesn't matter. Inquire into whatever you got now

What are thoughts but mental images(color) and narratives(sound)? What are emotions but sensation/feeling? I simplified the entire realm of experiencing for Self-inquiry, for the neti neti process. I am not interested in their intensity, density, texture, brightness etc. It's all just color, sound, sensation. No inside & outside dichotomy allowed. The search is not in the realm of color, sound and sensations. So I deliberately made up this simplified practice strategy so that I don't chase some vision (color), some rationalization and mental explanation (sound) or some exotic feeling/high (sensation). It becomes a lot easier to decrease the obsession with thoughts and experiences and relax the attention on itself if you start seeing experience in this simplied manner. Shinzen Young's ''Mindfulness with Labeling" uses this same strategy. Divide and Conquer After all, that fictitious ego is all about hiding amidst a shit load of junk and complexity. That's where it thrives! Simply, divide, break down, reject things, neti neti....and that ego is gone as if it never was!

gosh you and you're memes.. @Enizeo Glad that you found it helpful!

@Charlotte Yes do continue with the self inquiry. Your insight proves that it is doing it's job. That being said, let's do an experiment You've just described an insight beautifully. Now I ask you, How do you know all these things? What 'knowing' was there to register all these things? Isn't that same 'knowing' present right now, knowing all your current experience? Have you ever come across multiple 'knowing's? Isn't it the same 'knowing' that knows the absence of experiences in deep sleep? Even if you have an insight and say 'there is no me!', isn't it the same 'knowing' that registers it? Does this 'knowing' come and go, like states of mind come and go? This 'knowing', how far is it? How many steps do you have to take right now to be aware of it? What is the nature of this 'knowing'? Isn't this 'knowing' what you've been after all along? A 'knowing' that is ever present, unchangeable, independent of time, space, objects. I'll leave you with this

I've simplified the whole process to it's bare minimum. Think about this. You only have 3 elements in the entirety of your experience. This is all you see in your 'universe'. 1) Color (all visions) 2) Sound (all sounds) 3) Sensations/feelings (however gross or subtle) Have you ever come across any experience that is made out of a 4th element? Could you ever have an experience which has a 4th element? Now ask yourself and really find out, what that 'glimpse' was made of? was it a color? a sound? a subtle sense? a specific combination of these things? What you are in search of, is none of these 3 things but the 'knower' of them. No particular color, sound or sensation can exclusively possess your eternal 'Self'. Usually this is what happens. When we have a real 'spiritual glimpse', it is actually a resting in infinite Awareness as we truly are. In that non-objective 'experience', the mind and all it's interpretations are absent. But then, once again the mind does come up. The mind can't make sense of what happened so it relates that 'glimpse' with an objective and exotic 'experience' and thus the same conditioned movement to search and regain happiness by recreating that exotic experience begins all over again. Same thing happens in deep sleep. In deep sleep, the mind is absent. But in the morning we ask the mind about it. How can mind explain if it wasn't present in the first place? It usually just labels the experience of deep sleep as insignificant and not worth looking into in order to move on with it's conditioned activities. Ask yourself, by trying to regain that 'glimpse', what are you searching really? Are you searching for a color, a sound, a sensation? Aren't you just as much present right now as when the glimpse happened? Aren't you just as much aware right now as when the glimpse happened? Aren't you the same you all throughout this time? What is this continuous element? If it isn't a color, sound, sensation, then what is it? My point is, don't suppress this tendency to regain a 'glimpse' by brute force or rationalizations or just because some guru forbade it. Look into it. Inquire into the truth of the matter. All the best

@PsiloPutty @SoonHei Check out a thread made by @AleksM. Talks about constant breath awareness as a method to awaken. He did it himself and shared the experience.