Water by the River

You are right that this is the last piece of the puzzle. Self-Awareness (bold marking by me), or awareness of its own existence is indeed NOT the Absolute. Its the last illusion... I wouldn't say that for Awareness (since here we would be on slippery terrain), but for self-awareness/self-consciousness definitely. Massaro summarized it nicely. Maybe watch that video a few times, and then the other parts of the Infinity-series: Awareness is "always there" (or not, since its beyond existing and non-existing), at least as a potential for sentience (if nothing arises, aka cessation, deep sleep), but if there is nothing to perceive there is no (self-)-consciousness. Unaware Deep Sleep, Cessation. But it doesnt really make sense to talk about awareness/consciousness if there is no perception, since then there is also no self-consciousness or self-awareness. Its pure Infinity/Absolute. The clap of the one hand. THAT Reality/Being which can be unaware of itself is what you are. Not the (self-)awareness with which one identifies, that is one of the last lenses/filters of illusion. You can be nothing at all, unaware of yourself (since there is no self-reflective self yet), with the potential for sentience. In your case, I assume getting that is the last building block to Enlightenment and fully getting what you are. Without fully realizing that, there is a subtle murky "nothing" self (Roger Thisdell stage 4). Thisdells stage 5 (another video) is then the resolve of the contradictions of stage 4. Everything else after this True Being/Absolute comes later: Manifestation, Infinite Field of mere appearance, gods & humans & aliens and the whole shebang. The "I am self-Awareness/Consciousness" feeling/thought/Gestalt (very subtle, hard to spot, the end boss so to say) is the last illusion/filter/lense of the last separate-self that can be constructed. And since it can be seen, since it changes, its an object, temporary, moving in True You. Leaves us with the point who/what realized all of that? Reality/Being realizes itself. And that is called Enlightenment. Its not personal, its not anything separate. It is Reality comprehending itself. Jac O'Keffee: "We're left with consciousness that cannot know itself. It's such a fundamental that it actually can't know itself. However, it is known. You can drop back there and it is known, but you can't bring yourself there or your capacities to know it. It's almost like it's so fundamental that it can't turn around and see itself. It doesn't see itself. That's too much movement. That's movement such as space, time and identification and me, myself, I, and the building of my movie that happens". And maybe most important. It is not an it, or an Absolute, or anything "third person singular"-pronoun at all that "has" "Awareness" and explodes into manifestation. IT IS You. True You. With a big Y. That becomes totally obvious when the whole field is a mere appearance floating in Nothingness/Infinity (1), and you are "It" since there is no separate anything left at all, no center at all left (2). Nondual mere appearance, impersonally floating in the Infinite impersonal Universal Mind. Something reflecting about what it is (awareness,self-awareness, whatever) is already a separate-self (a manifestation, arising, moving within You. I-Thoughts/I-feelings have no dimension or form, but are still appearance/imagination/arising/"form"), and that hides the True Reality/Being. Too much movement... So yes, its tricky... Roger Thisdells stage model is nice. Since at stage 3 "Big-Mind" (Frank Yang called that God-state, easy to be reached via Psychedelics), one is already the nondual field (1). But getting the separate self mostly empty (Thisdell stage 4), and totally empty (Thisdell stage 5, centerlessness, Enlightenment), needs emptying out the separate-self completely. I have never seen one case where that was done mainly or purely with psychedelics. Not enough time in these states to empty out/transcend/understand the "high-speed-machine-gun-illusion-fire" of the separte-self-ego. But instead that lovely darling quite active appropriating all of the Nondual Infinity, Gods, Demons, ETs, n+1... Which sometimes is not for the faint-of-hearted. Ok, so, after mis-understanding the question the way I wanted in order to write about what I liked, lets come back to the original question: And why the "first" movement happened? 1.First, that is a question that presupposes duality. Form vs. emptiness, and also time. Which means it can't really be answered on the level of concepts. But lets try it anyway as good as possible, just so that it calms the remaining questions you have, so that you can rest in your True Being in a non-conceptual way so that the Big Bang can happen.. 2. Think in dimensions of Indras Net. Just because "your" perspective is "switched off" in cessation/deep sleep doesn't shut off all other perspectives. Understanding one single perspective ("yours") is enough to understand the structure of all perspectives/beings/nodes in Indras Net as Universal/Infinite Mind. Indras Net (which is also True You, but lets take the separte perspective) "continues" happily even if your perspective goes cessation/infinite/blank. 3. Who said it ever started? That is already a lot of Duality smuggled in. The past is imagined in its Totality right here and now. Its all a big illusion, including the past. True You is here right now, imagining all of it, fooling itself with such questions as you have (sorry to say, but you are close to the endgame boss, so I hope you forgive me). Get "rid" of the questions, let them dissolve in your infinite Nondual Being as mere movements of thought-arisings, and rest in your being in a non-conceptual way (Nonmeditation-Yoga). And sometimes softly ask yourself "who hears these words right now", but without effort and grasping. I have written extensively about Nonmeditation-Yoga (Mahamudra) somewhere else. Then the Big Bang can happen, Infinite Reality understanding itself. 4. Only Formlessness/emptiness/Infinity would be an asymetry. God has infinite potential of manifestation that apparently is being explored right here & now by "you" and "me" and "everyone else". To use a human metaphor: It is the nature of the Infinite to explore its potential, going from each creation cycle to the next. There have been many descriptions when coming out of cesstion/Nirvikalpha this original impulse for creation can be experienced. Not IN cessation (since there is nothing/pure infinity), but coming out of it. And, since its en vogue, lets close with ET: After so much Selling Water by the River, here the much more precise summary: The old pond, A frog jumps in: Plop! - Basho

well, large choice at the buffet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_death_deities For the journey: Grof, Stanislav: Books of the Dead: Manuals for Living and Dying https://www.amazon.com/Books-Dead-Manuals-Living-Imagination/dp/0500810419/ "The art of dying and the posthumous journey of the soul have been described and depicted in many cultures. 'Dying before dying', or practice in dying, has been sought throughout history, not just to overcome fear and give help at the moment of death, but to transfigure the quality of life. Stanislav Grof considers some of the most striking and important of the so-called 'books of the dead': ancient Egyptian funerary texts; the Tibetan Bardo Thodol; Maya and Aztec myths of the death and rebirth of the Hero Twins and the Plumed Serpent, Quetzalcoatl. From Europe come Christian visions of the soul's journey, the danses macabres, and imagery of mortal decay that recalls Tibetan practices. The 'books of the dead' are universally relevant as maps of a terrain that each of us will one day traverse." and a more up-to-date version: Ziewe, Jürgen: Vistas of Infinity - How to Enjoy Life When You Are Dead https://www.amazon.com/Vistas-Infinity-Enjoy-Life-When/dp/1326353381 Coming back to the boogeyman: The most handsome and charming: the most hilarious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mort so, its always, for sure: You never walk alone Why should the illusion stop just because one is dead? That would be easy...

Nancy disapproves and turns in her grave. and...

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bnLNkG6uR-w and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62NxnqT17rM

1. in Thisdells stage-system stage 3. Classic Nonduality with individuality/"I" still intact, although a bit emptied out. "I" "am" pure Consciousness/Everything/Reality/God/whatever. The Godself. The I extended to cosmic proportions. Or I am God. Or infinite ET. Or whatever. Either way, often not for the faint-hearted. Franks take on that: 2. is normally this here: Stage 4. A "murky" Individuality still left, making that stage still contradictory, and... still suffering with resistance to what is. And stage 5 is the end of the game: Yup. And since all of these stages can sound quite similiar, there are a lot of possibilities to... end up halfway up the mountain and declare it summit. And still suffer/resist what is, and declare that unavoidable. Selling Water by the River

Did the poor chap maybe watch to little Kenneth et al.? Or did he watch too much? Or didn't he take it serious? Or too serious? So many questions...

Because for most, as you wrote, they are concepts. Ideas. Thinking. Replacing an old worldview with a new one. And concepts won't help when the Boogeyman comes.

I would recommend listening to these videos a few times, and clearly noticing the differences from stage 4 to stage 5. Stage 4 seems totally empty. But it is not. The cycle you describe is typical stage 4. vs.

vs. I don't know a single case where stage 5 has been achieved without a looong meditation practice getting rid of the subtle remnants of stage 4. Because it takes a long time (for most) at the awakened nondual states of stage 4 to get rid of the most subtle remnants of the separate self. Psychedelics get one to stage 3 (nondual Unity Godmind), or in more sophisticated cases to stage 4. The difference between stage 4 and stage 5 is the death of any and all separate self identity in real time. Not one single subtle element of that sticks any more and is not seen trough/cut off/ seen as moving within oneself. And there are many very subtle elements that can prevent realization. And the difference between stage 4 and 5 is earth-shaking. That is why its called Enlightenment. And that prevents the clouding over you describe.

http://hauntedpress.net/What_is_Enlightenment.html "Feel what it is like to “not be there.” The real breakthrough will come when you “feel” the truth. It's creepy, not blissful or ecstatic. It should scare you, the body should react defensively, or there could be uncontrolled laughter at how stupid you have been for so long. It's like one of those 3-D dot pictures - you stare and stare at those dots until, bingo! - the hidden picture emerges. After that, you can always see it; it can't be unlearned. It's the same with enlightenment." and, maybe the most clearest of these videos Colette Davis: https://www.instagram.com/p/C2wckwKSZme/ https://www.instagram.com/thatbeyondduality/ Feel any similiarities? Internally, its perceptions perceiving themselves. The former persona moving like the wind in ones boundless nondual Being, and sometimes not being there at all. Nobody home. Literally the Totality perceiving itself, nobody home... And its not the nobody home of Avril Lavigne... It is the nondual infinite boundless Unity/Being, the Fullness of Infinity where nothing could ever possibly lack, which is not separated by a separate self cutting Reality/Being into subject/object, inside/outside, higher/lower...

The Infinite Reality/Universal Mind/Being is in nondual unity with its (temporarily and always changing) appearing manifestation. Since there is no constant object (none, it all is in flux and changes), one could call it temporary illusion. The Infinite Reality/Being containing and manifesting/imagining it (like dreamer in a dream) is the constant, although it literally is formless. Yet, it has the potential for the illusion/manifesting creation, and also for awareness/sentience/self-consciousness. And that potential awareness becomes consciousness/self-aware if manifestation happens. So yes, all you write is correct. Although you separate the empty Reality" bottomless present that is. totally empty of any content, without meaning, sense, purpose, cause, finality. It's only now, bottomless" a bit too much from its manifestation/form, which you mention as " It is the cosmos that lives, monstrously alive. Is that an illusion? I don't think so, seems absolutely real, is the infinite manifestation, as absolute than the empty being. what do you think?". I dont't know if I got you correctly and if you mean it like that, but it reads like that. The manifestation is as real or unreal as anything else. It is temporary, not constant, so in the end illusion/appearance and not "out-there". But "real" as appearance. The potential to manifest is the potential of Reality itself. But it doesnt need to do that to be. What it is for sure is temporary and changing. Reality/the essence of True Infinite Being is not changing. Although it is formless. Most often: Reality = formless Reality/Being + manifestation also possible: Reality = formless infinite Reality/Being + NO manifestation (cessation, Deep sleep) not possible: Reality = no formless infinite Reality/Being + manifestation The question is always: What is more fundamental. Or constant. Or timeless. Or always here. And do I identify with that on a deep level, in daily life (truly nondual then, and nobody separate home), or with passing arisings. The arising of (self-)consciousness is NOT constant, see for example deep sleep or cessation. Any form of I-feeling/I-thoughts (these can be very subtle) is non-constant arising, or not ones True-Self. Any form of resistance to what is right here right now is also just false-separate-self/resistance/arising/illusion/ignorance. And if the not-from-this-earth- consciousness is also just an arising, temporary form of (self-)consciousness, and with that a manifestation in True Being/Reality.... well...

And maybe the illusion continues like that? The show changes. Infinite Being remains. Nowhere else to go. Nothing outside. Infinite Formless Being always already, containing/manifesting all form/show... And that obvious realization is the liberation of Enlightenment. Deathless and eternal. Reality/True Being will stay eitherway, whatever may arise again. Nowhere else to go.. And not everyone is a OBE-explorer like Jürgen Ziewe: A monk asked a Zen master, “What happens when you die?” The Zen master replied, I don’t know.” The monk said, “What do you mean. Aren’t you a Zen master?” And the Zen Master replied, “Yes, but I’m not a dead one.”

"This is the end, beautiful friend This is the end, my only friend The end of our elaborate plans The end of everything that stands ... Can you picture what will be? So limitless and free ... This is the end, beautiful friend This is the end, my only friend The end It hurts to set you free But you'll never follow me The end of laughter and soft lies The end of nights we tried to die This is the end" So. What is the end?

I always ask myself with whom the Solipsists/Infinities of Gods are writing/talking. Just kidding. I know with whom ( :

Nobody at home. Only boundless Infinity. Try doing that with a monkey mind still well and alive!

What is beyond Reality?

... and then (and only then), the entire universe is the home of your True Self. Very good. Bon voyage.

So what is the elephant?

Bye bye 10th ox picture. I mean, what do the Zen/Chan guys know? They only did "it" for millenia...

The reason is when "one" is too fascinated with wave-surfing on the River/Ocean (Awakening n+1), that "one" (separate-self arisings) prevents the Realization of being the Ocean. Of dropping into it and fully dissolving in it, as it. Or Enlightenment. Fascination with wave-surfing, or surfing/awakening to Infinity of consciousness exactly prevents the transcending of the last (very subtle) separate-self lenses/arisings/filters/centers. Because that arising of this fascination IS the last separate-self lense/arising/filter/element. But to get tired of the fascination of wave-surfing, go wave-surfing. Its absolutely fine, since for most that is exactly what is necessary to get tired of it. Selling wave-surfing-by-the-River-to-get-tired-of-it