Preetom

''Anything perceivable or conceivable is not you'' Recently during self inquiry and writing, many times I've come to this point when it feels like I'm on this final step. There is no particular identification with anything. But it feels like something final is there that needs to be released. It's just the utter mindfuck and I just can't wrap my mind around how I can be really absolutely nothing. It's a still state. There is no palpable fear or strong emotions. It's like I just can't accept the fact that my destiny is absolutely nothing, that I never had a life, that I've always been and always will be nothing, that I've never been anything but that. It's all so glaringly obvious right in front of my nose, yet I just can't accept my destiny. It has become so common now that I can self inquire for few minutes and go straight to that place. All intentions stop. There is not even any intention left to let go. Would like to know how you guys reconciled this. I guess this is why it is told that Enlightenment can only happen by grace, not on my command. In this part of this video Leo gives this wonderful example and it literally feels like this everytime I come back to default mode of being.

Am I aware? Yes. Is this knowing of being dependent on any particular experience? No. They are known when I'm not identified with any particular experience. It's this relaxation of attention on all objective experience. No particular thought or experience is latched on to. Yet I do not cease to exist without an experience. In fact I am even more conscious of my existence in such a case. Can I knowingly be aware amidst all the changing phenomena? That is the name of the game. It gets a little easier along the way. There is nothing fantastic stuff to know. Just relaxing the focus and knowingly be aware. There is no dogging or probing involved. No figuring things out. A good place to be indeed for most parts.

That's the illusion of a separate entity abiding somewhere and doing stuff. There was and is no one alive in the first place. By death, it means the death of the illusion you currently have. Feel free to watch the entire video if it resonates with you.

Summary of own contemplation: I have never had something called ''a direct perception of Reality''. For my entire life, I've only experienced how my mind has interpreted Reality. But usually, the case is even worse. Usually it is the perception of perception of perception of Reality. That's how I've lived most of life. That's how virtually everyone lives. Here is how it goes: Reality--->My indirect perception or interpretations of it--->Projected by me and reflected by other people--->Living according to what other people think. Perception..of...perception..........................................................of perception................................................................of perception.................................................. Whatever input it is, it always has to come through that bastard yapping in the head..either consciously or unconsciously. The mind is the entire network of arbitrary and groundless concepts which operates through cues and language. Each element is groundless in itself but as a network the whole thing reflects a mirage of something called real meaning or truth. Think about it. Do you have multiple sources of knowledge? NO. It's only your own mind, through which this entirety of perception is interpreted. The source that says I'm a loser and the source that says I'm a winner; are they two different sources? No they are the same source. The only source of cognition. So what can you trust? Nothing. All knowledge is arbitrary. There is no such thing as objective knowledge. All are arbitrary contents in consciousness. The only thing you can verify for yourself is your own existence. Being aware of being aware. That's the only authentic, genuine knowledge that's possible to know by any being on any plane. Once you see this, fascination with contents that bind you lessons. You naturally skew towards the untainted witnessing position and discover your true home there all along.

"What is dead may never die'' I wonder if the Greyjoys really know what's being pointed here every time they shout it out

''Reality is not what it appears to be.'' Getting blown over by this fact over and over again recently. There is nothing objective about any appearance. A thing can only appear as something it is not. It can appear as literally anything, except for what it really is. Does that ring some bell? This is the very definition of Symbol. A symbol is anything but the thing it represents. I remember reading a book that said it nicely. We're living in a hallucination like the movie Matrix. But the difference is, there is no higher, ultimate, objective Reality waiting out there somewhere. Probably this is why Science's search for objective Truth will be a failed project even after a million years. If you're chasing for Santa Clause for a million years, how close will you get to finding him? When it really hits you, you slowly lose the fascination with objective experiences. Attention relaxes and drops into it's source. You feel the non objective experience of Being, which is all there is to your current experience. When you probe a little deeper...Gone as if never existed!

Yes if you're using language. The furthest language can describe the Absolute is through negations. But negations never say what it is. But direct being doesn't have to have that limitation.

Hello

Something to contemplate on before asking why people do any shit at all?

Am I aware? yes. The whole Enlightenment business boils down to the quality of attention. Sticky thoughts. Obsession with phenomenal experience. The constant effort to give subjective fictitious appearance some objective, independent Reality. There is no such Reality. Can anything be rendered without I AM? Why bother with the broken pieces of outcomes. Focus on the source. It's like we rarely remember that the sun is above us that is lighting everything up. We obsess with things that the sunlight illuminates but never bother to look at the sun. Isn't it the thing I've done for the most part of my life? This is why all beliefs, contraction and misery is self imposed. It is only there because it is not seen through properly. Reality is only real as long as I see it as real. That's how this whole thing is running... a house of cards with no foundation. But the breakthrough from this delusion is not easy. It would be so easy if these were only intellectual concepts. These concepts are held together by deep rooted feelings and emotions. How else could this thing work? The core material is wisp dream stuff but the binding material is like super glue. This is why I still give a fuck when rubber meets the road. There is still fear and bunch of other feelings gluing all of this hodgepodge together..while it lasts.

Am I aware? yes. How do I actually verify that knowledge for myself? Do I need a thought or intellect to confirm me that I am aware? No, the thought comes later. While I remain present, aware. It's just there. I'm aware of it or not. Can the mind do anything to know it ever? No, the mind never knows this presence. It can only engage ina commentary about things. But is that commentary vital to my own being? Nope. So that means I AM with or without any authority or commentary. These appearances, they really are illusions. They feel so real when you're caught by the throat by them. They lose all power when you remember your self. It's the most unbelievable thing ever. Every time I remember my self, it is just there. Untouched, unaffected, aware. Isn't this entire field of phenomenal experience known? yes. Is there a break or a hole or division in that seamless knowing? No. Am I aware? What is it that knows this entirety of experience? Is that pure knowing of this world? On whose behalf thinking is done? Who is the central character of all this narrative? where is it? Do I remember my Self?

@Strikr Contemplation on one's own death is for living a good life. Right now. Just for this life. It not about speculating what happens afterwards. Who the hell knows anyway? At the end of the day, they are just our beliefs and assumptions and they probably won't make it to the other side hehe.. But while we're in this game, the only certainty is that this game is not gonna last forever. There is hardly any other thing more sobering that than.

Memento Mori: Remember that you're gonna die. Undoubtedly one of the greatest lessons I've ever come across. I've yet to come across a single truly self actualized and wise person who hasn't seriously contemplated with his own death and thus have a mature relationship with his mortality. If there is one thing that's truly ours in this world, only thing certain, it's our own physical death. Nothing can take that away from us. Where do you think all these values, search for knowledge, spirituality came from? It is all because of death, our very short finite life. If there was literally no end there would be no search for anything. Death is the full stop. Any worthwhile adventure, search and wisdom comes from being aware of one's mortality frequently. So what does the ego or the devil need to do to ensure it's fictitious existence? Bastardize and avoid death at all cost, usually through incessantly distracting itself. And thus we got the 21st century, where everyone has opinions about everything except facing the thing that matter the most. Death, my bestest friend, thanks for recovering my life. @Your place at Heart your story is inspiring and bold. Such a transformation can only come from tapping into something REAL like death. Thanks for sharing.

Am I aware? yes. This whole thing boils down to this: knowingly being what I am. That means knowingly being a conscious being. It sounds so loopy and sort of like meaningless semantic game. But oh boy, it flips the entirety of experience upside down, totally recontexualizing it. Attention, which is the knowing element of experience, takes very different shape or mode. My experience or my world is nothing but how attention functions and knows. During the fragmented state, when I assume myself as a limited thing stuck within an object, attention seems to be very pointy and sticky. The sensation in the head is felt and immediately attention seems to pierce into that experience and sticks itself there, creating a separate identity out of that sensation. From there follows a myriad chain of unquestioned assumptions and justifications that suggest how I am a human stuck in a limited human body sensation. But when the knowing of the same experience is noticed, the entire ego paradigm just collapses. Immediately. Without any time delay. Attention seems to take the shape of a soft infinitely big round sphere within which all experiences are known without making distinctions. Notions like direction, location, object and non object don't make any sense experiencially. It just feels utterly natural and the first thought that follows is how can anyone miss something this obvious. Last few days have been a roller coaster ride, shifting between these 2 modes incessantly every few seconds. Yet at the same time, it feels like nothing has really happened. What can happen to That which is immovable, unconcerned, untainted, unprotected, untouchable, free? Maharaj, you were right all along. All my dilemma is due to a mistaken identity. It all stems from forgetting my Self.

Am I aware? yes. I am aware. I'm alive. What can be more magical than that? There is only a current of self awareness. There is no control or can be any volition on anything. There is only knowing. Knowing what? I don't know. Only knowing. From the light of self-awareness there feels to be no distinction between knowing one thing over another. There is no thing, just knowing. Am I aware? Could I be anything else? What is the source of this knowingness? Which direction can knowingness go to find more of itself? The entire field of experience is pervaded with knowing, through and through. Being aware of being aware. What is the magic of this approach? If the self is remembered, then the entire race gets won. If the self is forgotten, nothing makes sense, everything becomes chaotic, even an infinite movements too do not make any change to the situation. This knowingness is not restricted to any special or specific part of the body. Everything gets known equally. It's so glaringly obvious, so simple yet so easy to overlook. This non located, non objective experience of being aware, being present, now. Eternally. What is eternity?

Watching Leo's SD videos, Vlogs and some thinking on my own led to this insight. "Cultures evolve through a SD sandwich model" This is how the explanation came. Generally speaking, beige, red, orange, yellow are individualistic/materialistic while purple, blue, green, turquoise are collective/spiritual oriented. The sandwich model works like this. A culture at a certain time, is grounded on one stage(meat) which is sandwiched by the color before and after it. The meat stands firm while both sides are at tug of war for power dynamics. The reason is this: man has both individual and collective aspects in his life which is exercised by where the culture is at. For example, USA as a whole right now is grounded on orange. It is sandwiched by blue and green waging war with each other. Orange is caught in between reacting to both depending on situations. What I mean by the meat is, if a citizen needs to channel his individual pursuits, he doesn't need beige or red. He can do it in an orange way because that's the current norm. But when it comes to exercising the collective aspects, he is caught between the war of blue vs green. So the current challenge of USA is not a material problem but a collective/spiritual one. I'm not saying that a person jumps from blue to green skipping orange. Its more like when blue values channel into orange, so do orange values channel into green because a man needs to put up with both individual and collective aspects simultaneously. Now let's say in 200 years USA shifts completely to green. That will be end of all blue religions. Green will be sandwiched by orange and yellow. It will then be a materialistic problem for USA as orange and yellow will be tugging for power. Manipulative materialism vs systems thinking. A child taking birth in that culture will go straight to green to exercise his collective/spiritual aspects because green will be established and thus purple, blue are not needed. So you get the idea. Finally, I don't think a culture will go full turquoise as a whole ever. At best case scenarios, there is always going to be healthy combinations of yellow-turquoise because man will always have both individual and collective aspects according to his unique temperament. So that's the ultimate vision of all cultures. To reconcile this spiral dynamics sandwich into the unification of yellow-turquoise. In such a culture, man wouldn't need selfish manipulations to exercise his individual aspects. And he wouldn't need ideologies and dogmas to exercise his spiritual aspects. An Utopian vision indeed

God is the real player. Devil is the NPC. Know your place son

Am I aware? yes. Feeling especially raw and heavy today. It's so easy to get complacent, so easy to forget. How can you not see the only thing that is going on? it's only possible when you're dreaming. yeah of course...only while dreaming it is possible. It requires a trial by fire to break through the initial hurdles. Death awareness. this thing is not gonna fly without being driven by the raw energy of a rabid dissatisfaction of living as a lie. Am I aware of my finiteness? what am I doing? Every moment not being aware is a moment wasted. But the funny thing is, I can't force myself into awareness. In fact there is no process to awareness. Either I'm knowingly aware or not. So much of the time, the I tends to stick with a sensation on the front head part. A phantom entity trying desperately, constantly to take a shape and declare it's own individual existence. Is that really what I am? A sensation in the head? Really? that's the driving center of my whole life? all thoughts, motives, judgments, resistance coming from there? It's the most absurd thing. How can such a thing exist? it seems so silly when seen properly. oh then I remember ego doesn't exist. I feel stuck because i imagine myself to be stuck. Really, there is no other way for me to be stuck. Can I see through my bullshit and still believe in it simultaneously? it just doesn't work.

@Sven Very good point! When you're Enlightened, you discover yourself as the naked awareness only. But unfortunately naked awareness can't walk around, have sex, eat food and do work. So it slips back into only the attire it had, the same old character, but never get fooled by it anymore. That's why after major awakening, many people need a period of integration before starting the activities of the world again. From there, their character is like a costume and it keeps on getting refined over time by the shining awareness.

Btw human population is way too big to generalize into one box. If one thing in phenomenal creation is apparent, it is the diversity. Almost nothing in nature is ever the same. How can you shove 8-10 billions of people under one category, one strategy. Let those who resonate with being a leader, become a leader. Same goes for everyone. Whatever resonates. No point in taking one perspective and trying to fit it into and explain through another perspective.

now that sounds like Tantra misunderstood and taken way off course

@Leo Gura Omg how could I miss it? Finiteness. Of course...that's what all these knowledge and activities are about. Every volition comes down to this, ''How to make the best out of this finiteness?'' Thank you

''Tolerance, Universal Love, mystical Union with God and loving all lives as his own life''

@Joseph Maynor A full awakening which is the absence of all perspectives aka the absolute Truth, do you think it's possible to frame such a thing with another perspective?

Until that sweet game compels you to be a cog in the machine to produce sweets for others. Just kidding Ultimately nothing gets better or worse forever. There is always an end. It's called death. Also human mind is complex and operates through hedonic adaptation. Even Leo mentions that he forgets some days how bad his early careers were, taking his present condition as the norm if he is not vigilant enough. So it always boils down to that bastard yapping inside...one way or another