Water by the River

@Moksha @Bazooka Jesus An die Freude / Ode to Joy by Friedrich Schiller translated by William F. Wertz Joy, thou beauteous godly lightning, Daughter of Elysium, Fire drunken we are ent’ring Heavenly, thy holy home! Thy enchantments bind together, What did custom stern divide, Every man becomes a brother, Where thy gentle wings abide. Chorus. Be embrac’d, ye millions yonder! Take this kiss throughout the world! Brothers—o’er the stars unfurl’d Must reside a loving Father. Who the noble prize achieveth, Good friend of a friend to be; Who a lovely wife attaineth, Join us in his jubilee! Yes—he too who but one being On this earth can call his own! He who ne’er was able, weeping Stealeth from this league alone! Chorus. He who in the great ring dwelleth, Homage pays to sympathy! To the stars above leads she, Where on high the Unknown reigneth. Joy is drunk by every being From kind nature’s flowing breasts, Every evil, every good thing For her rosy footprint quests. Gave she us both vines and kisses, In the face of death a friend, To the worm were given blisses And the Cherubs God attend. Chorus. Fall before him, all ye millions? Know’st thou the Creator, world? Seek above the stars unfurl’d, Yonder dwells He in the heavens. Joy commands the hardy mainspring Of the universe eterne. Joy, oh joy the wheel is driving Chorus. Fall before him, all ye millions? Know’st thou the Creator, world? Seek above the stars unfurl’d, Yonder dwells He in the heavens.

@Water by the River what I didn't understand anything sorry Beautiful analogy by Moksha. Sorry, I am no native English speaker. Sprechen Sie deutsch? Ummm, what I wanted to say was: You said you are not human. Yes, right. I said you "have" a human. In You. In Big You. Reality itself. That is why I wrote Capital Y because You is the "Opening" of Reality itself. Transcend and include the human. And it seems you get more and more succesfull in installing a switch to lower the volume of any internal self-talk. And on that, I congratulate you! Good job! Water by the River

You have a human, buzzing around in You . Capital Y. And it seems you are quite successful in installing & wiring a button for radio-volume control for it... Good job. Water by the River

Moksha, thanks for this post. I clearly made a mistake quoting this Wilber article that is indeed ripe with potential misinterpretation without further context in this forum. "Ego is NOT the human mind, with its perceptions, drives, and desires. Enlightenment precludes none of these phenomena, nor does it imply that people become mindless automatons. Ego is IDENTIFICATION with the human mind. It is blind enslavement to perceptions, drives, and desires in the false conviction that these attachments will lead to happiness. It is inevitably suffering." Nice summary, fully agree with it. Ego Identification is what I call separate self, separate self arisings or separate self gestalt. The identification with only a part of Reality (an illusion part to be precise) that splits the Infinite Oneness of Reality into two, into duality. "Wilbur is right that mystics change the world. Their motivation is not misidentification, but is the pure channeling of the absolute into its cosmos. The mind is not abandoned, but is deconditioned and transfigured from an oppressive demon into a companion dragon that will take you into depths and heights that would have been impossible in the unawakened state." Yes, beautiful. Water by the River

Sure, fully agree. Thanks for highlighting that. ( : A functioning healthy working character floating around in oneself it not a bad thing. I generally like the model of Ken Wilber on these topics (below). Any kind of healthy realization/transcendence should make one more loving and productive. If it kills the functioning character, makes one disfunctional, insane or mean, it is not the healthy version of realization/transcendence, but the sick one. If at all. differentiate, transcend and integrate (the healthy model of growth and transcendence), but disassociate/split off, don't transcend, and of course don't integrate (the sick version of failed growth and transcendence), and, uuum, mucho problemas. Daniel Brown once said: How can one spot deep and mature Realization? With the conduct with which one lives ones life. Yours truly believes that this is the ultimate compass, beyond blabla-bravado, conceptual castles in the sky, the lastest new awakened state of the day, claims of superiority of whatever-kind. Anybody who claims otherwise: Why not? Too difficult? For whom? Selling Water by the River The Meaning of Egolessness – Ken Wilber Ken Wilber: Precisely because the ego, the soul and the Self can all be present simultaneously, we can better understand the real meaning of egolessness, Egolessness-awaken - a notion that has caused an inordinate amount of confusion. But egolessness does not mean the absence of a functional self (that’s a psychotic, not a sage); it means that one is no longer exclusively identified with that self. One of the many reasons we have trouble with the notion of egoless is that people want their egoless sages to fulfill all their fantasies of saintly or spiritual, which usually means dead from the neck down, without fleshy wants or desires, gently smiling all the time. All of the things that people typically have trouble with money, food, sex, relationships, desire they want their saints to be without. Egoless sages who are above all that is what people want. Talking heads is what they want. Religion, they believe, will simply get rid of all baser instincts, drives and relationships, and hence they look to religion, not for advice on how to live life with enthusiasm, but on how to avoid it, repress it, deny it, escape it. In other words, the typical person wants the spiritual sage to be less than a person, somehow devoid of all the messy, juicy, complex, pulsating, desiring, urging forces that drive most human beings. We expect our sages to be an absence of all that drives us! All the things that frighten us, confuse us, torment us, confound us: we want our sages to be untouched by them altogether. And that absence, that vacancy, that less than personal, is what we often mean by egoless. But egoless does not mean less than personal, it means more than personal. Not personal minus, but personal plus all the normal personal qualities, plus some transpersonal ones. Think of the great yogis, saints and sages from Moses to Christ to Padmasambhava. They were not feeble-mannered milquetoasts, but fierce movers and shakers from bullwhips in the Temple to subduing entire countries. They rattled the world on its own terms, not in some pie-in-the-sky piety; many of them instigated massive social revolutions that have continued for thousands of years. And they did so not because they avoided the physical, emotional and mental dimensions of humanness and the ego that is their vehicle, but because they engaged them with a drive and intensity that shook the world to its very foundations. No doubt, they were also plugged into the soul (deeper psychic) and spirit (formless Self) the ultimate source of their power but they expressed that power, and gave it concrete results, precisely because they dramatically engaged the lower dimensions through which that power could speak in terms that could be heard by all. These great movers and shakers were not small egos; they were, in the very best sense of the term, big egos, precisely because the ego (the functional vehicle of the gross realm) can and does exist alongside the soul (the vehicle of the subtle) and the Self (vehicle of the causal). To the extent these great teachers moved the gross realm, they did so with their egos, because the ego is the functional vehicle of that realm. They were not, however, identified merely with their egos (that’s a narcissist), they simply found their egos plugged into a radiant Kosmic source. The great yogis, saints and sages accomplished so much precisely because they were not timid little toadies but great big egos, plugged into the dynamic Ground and Goal of the Kosmos itself, plugged into their own higher Self, alive to the pure atman (the pure I–I) that is one with Brahman; they opened their mouths and the world trembled, fell to its knees, and confronted its radiant God. Saint Teresa was a great contemplative? Yes, and Saint Teresa is the only woman ever to have reformed an entire Catholic monastic tradition (think about it). Gautama Buddha shook India to its foundations. Rumi, Plotinus, Bodhidharma, Lady Tsogyal, Lao Tzu, Plato, the Bal Shem Tov these men and women started revolutions in the gross realm that lasted hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years, something neither Marx nor Lenin nor Locke nor Jefferson can yet claim. And they did not do so because they were dead from the neck down. No, they were monumentally, gloriously, divinely big egos, plugged into a deeper psychic, which was plugged straight into God. There is certainly a type of truth to the notion of transcending ego : it doesn’t mean destroy the ego, it means plug it into something bigger. (As Nagarjuna put it, in the relative world, atman is real; in the absolute, neither atman nor anatman is real. Thus, in neither case is anatta a correct description of reality.) The small ego does not evaporate; it remains as the functional center of activity in the conventional realm. As I said, to lose that ego is to become a psychotic, not a sage. Transcending the ego thus actually means to transcend but include the ego in a deeper and higher embrace, first in the soul or deeper psychic, then with the Witness or primordial Self, then with each previous stage taken up, enfolded, included and embraced in the radiance of One Taste. And that means we do not get rid of the small ego, but rather, we inhabit it fully, live it with verve, use it as the necessary vehicle through which higher truths are communicated. Soul and Spirit include body, emotions and mind; they do not erase them. Put bluntly, the ego is not an obstruction to Spirit, but a radiant manifestation of Spirit. All Forms are not other than Emptiness, including the form of the ego. It is not necessary to get rid of the ego, but simply to live it with a certain exuberance. When identification spills out of the ego and into the Kosmos at large, the ego discovers that the individual atman is in fact all of a piece with Brahman. The big Self is indeed no small ego, and thus, to the extent you are stuck in your small ego, a death and transcendence is required. Narcissists are simply people whose egos are not yet big enough to embrace the entire Kosmos, and so they try to be central to the Kosmos instead. But we do not want our sages to have big egos; we do not even want them to display a manifest dimension at all. Anytime a sage displays humanness in regard to money, food, sex, relationships we are shocked, shocked, because we are planning to escape life altogether, not live it, and the sage who lives life offends us. We want out, we want to ascend, we want to escape, and the sage who engages life with gusto, lives it to the hilt, grabs each wave of life and surfs it to the end this deeply, profoundly disturbs us, frightens us, because it means that we, too, might have to engage life, with gusto, on all levels, and not merely escape it in a cloud of luminous ether. We do not want our sages to have bodies, egos, drives, vitality, sex, money, relationships, or life, because those are what habitually torture us, and we want out. We do not want to surf the waves of life, we want the waves to go away. We want vaporware spirituality. The integral sage, the nondual sage, is here to show us otherwise. Known generally as tantric, these sages insist on transcending life by living it. They insist on finding release by engagement, finding nirvana in the midst of samsara, finding total liberation by complete immersion. They enter with awareness the nine rings of hell, for nowhere else are the nine heavens found. Nothing is alien to them, for there is nothing that is not One Taste. Indeed, the whole point is to be fully at home in the body and its desires, the mind and its ideas, the spirit and its light. To embrace them fully, evenly, simultaneously, since all are equally gestures of the One and Only Taste. To inhabit lust and watch it play; to enter ideas and follow their brilliance; to be swallowed by Spirit and awaken to a glory that time forgot to name. Body and mind and spirit, all contained, equally contained, in the ever-present awareness that grounds the entire display. In the stillness of the night, the Goddess whispers. In the brightness of the day, dear God roars. Life pulses, mind imagines, emotions wave, thoughts wander. What are all these but the endless movements of One Taste, forever at play with its own gestures, whispering quietly to all who would listen: is this not you yourself? When the thunder roars, do you not hear your Self? When the lightning cracks, do you not see your Self? When clouds float quietly across the sky, is this not your very own limitless Being, waving back at you?

Bernadette Roberts wrote a book on her experiences with True No-Self: The Experience of No-Self. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernadette_Roberts Some comments on the topic and Bernadette Roberts book in the link below: Inliytened1 quotes above also provide an excellent perspective on the topic. Selling Water by the River

Very nice description, and interesting similiarity. That is exactly the essence of the method (Mahamudra stage 1. Skill of Reckognition) once really implemented (after a long time of practice to get really able to do that) that got things really going for me with awakened states. "What happens if you investigate into emerging thoughts this way, is that they get FASTER. VERY FAST. Like 20-30 emergent thoughts/feeling arisings per second, most of them rudimentary. The mind does this to keep the illusion going. To make it too fast for you. But at some point, one learns to get that fast also..." Basically, looking into a thought, one sees its Emptiness/Nothingness (one doesn't find the thought, it evaporates). It is cut off. Dzogchen calls this cutting off "Trekchö". Daniel Brown called this stage a "High Speed Search Task into the unfindability of the nature of thoughts". A High Speed Search task into their emptiness, into their nature as consciousness, as Nothingness. So the emerging gets fast, very fast. Daniel Ingram also mentions that. But at some point, with enough practice and familiarity, YOU get faster. You spot and cut off every very fast, subtle, fragmentary thought arising. None of them "grips" you anymore, since you have seen them all, and their structure. Just thoughts arising very fast ...., see link below Selling Water by the River

Oh, I had my share of suffering, as every other being. But also some kind of compass and intuition that seemed to have pointed in a not too wrong direction. Concerning psychedelics, as I wrote before somewhere else: This is a public forum, and the stuff is illegal here. So please excuse that I don't give a comment. Daniel Brown (Author of Pointing Out the Great Way, the book I mainly used for the meditation techniques I describe) once answered when asked if he had experience with Psychedelics,in a tongue in cheeck-style: "I would never do something like that", and smiled .He did studies while studying Psychology at Harvard giving LSD to terminal Cancer Patients, with great results. Until it was forbidden. Luckily, Johns Hopkins University and others continue with similiar studies with Psilocybin.

Yes. I saw too much deep structure similiarties in all the spiritual traditions. That made sense to me. That was the only coherent explanation of the Kosmos for me. And the concept of Integral (Wilber) resonated deeply in me. So, a long time nothing happened where it could be said that meditation is more than just mindfulness training. Relaxing, interesting, a bit of bliss, but also in the beginning just one of the hardest and most annoying things one can try. Basic meditation training: Formal training on the pillow, mindfulness during daily life. Over quite some years. Stage 1 Mahamudra: Skill of Reckongition: And the thing with the increased thought-emerging-frequency was really the point where it took off. First, the ability to stay "on top" of the mindstream and cut it at will. Later, awakened states with nonduality followed. Stage 2/3: So then, a few years later, Nonduality followed. Before that point, it brought quite some bliss. But nothing where one could say: Yes, thats it. Don't need any external proof or convincing anymore. Nonduality changes that. It is evident. Stage 4: And then later, after some years letting these states develop and ripen, always here Ultimate Reality started dawning. 4 Mahamudra Main-stages: 0: Initial Concentrative Meditation as preaparation 1 stage: Skill of Reckognition: Cutting off the Thought Mindstream 2 stage: Yoga of Unelaboration: Always Here (never not here, timeless) Mind opens up 3: Yoga of One Taste: Nonduality 4: Yoga of Nonmeditation: Separate Self gets transcended. Pure Impersonal infinite Consciousness/Awareness without any separate-self flying around in it, itself being the world and all manifestation. That is the deep structure found in every meditation system. It is always in a deep structure similiar to that. And the tricky point, where most of the discussion happens here: Between 3 and 4. Psychedelics do bring one to a pretty empty nonduality. But not to that which stage 4 brings.... Not fully empty and impersonal. Not fully conforming to the enlightened mindstream. Water by the River

For me psychedelic are a tool for understanding. I think that's the key. Not conceptual understanding, of course. Understanding of the barries that veils. For me will and control are not tools in this game, because they are the walls. I wrote a bit sloppy: Sure Psychedelics dissolve large parts of the separate self. But not all of it. The most subtle layers remain. And they are very subtle But If you do that, you strength the you. Because YOU are doing a effort, trying something, and that is precisely the barrier Yes, correct observation. But necessary at this stage. And that gets automated by training. At some point, when its automatic, one throws the stick in the fire. But that comes quite late (Yoga of Nonmeditation, last stage). And to get to 15-20+ Thought/feeling arisings cut via Trekchö, its fully automatic. Thinking is waaaay to slow to do that. Thinking works in time-frames of 0,5 seconds, normally 2-4 seconds to think complete sentences. On that point I am really sure. It is not a problem of using a bit of effort here. It will get automized soon. Trekchö it not countering thinking with thinking. That is the begining stage before. Trekchö is really that fast. It is a "High-Speed-Search-Task into the Unfindability/Emptiness of thoughts. Ever seen one? They evaporate when looking into them. Problem is then only: They get faster and faster then.... Water by the River

The essence of fears is the same as oft thoughts: Looked into their nature, they dissolve in their own emptiness/consciousness. Same practice as described in my last post. Yet, better one starts with "easier" every-day-thoughts first, and slowly works oneself up to the major opponents in this game: Fears, Trauma, Core-problems.... One opponent after the other. And just staying on top everday-life-thoughts and cutting them brings the skills/ability to face the larger enemies... Water by the River

The deciding step for really getting the nondual awakened states flowing what is described below. Before that point in practice, no Nonduality, the visual field rock solid "material" and out there "external". No awakened state. To get there took quite some years. Could have been faster with good coaching, but didn't have that. Imagine it like this: Many years of meditation the mindful-way. Zero awakened state from that, not to even think about Nonduality at all. Didn't even know what that really is, despite reading about it. And then the bliss of these states, and nonduality opened up.... But that was also a process over several years. Cutting off the mindstream like this, or at least letting it fully transparent flow in oneself (that is not the usual mindfulness, its thought train appears like an object-flow in you), changes the energetic states of the whole system. It is an indirect path (but it can't be different): You influence the thought via ATTENTION (this is something you can guide/focus/control). You can't directly influence the Awakened State, how could you. You look into the thoughts, like described below. They dissolve then, their nature IS emptiness/consciousness. That done long enough brings the energetic shift to the awakened states. At least for me. And for thousands of others, see the Mahamudra-and Dzogchen practicelineages. Since more than one Millenia. And of course you can do that also! Every being can. The essence of each thought IS Consciousness/Emptiness. The separate-self IS these thoughts, and corresponding feelings. One can dissolve them all. And that clears the way. Reality it litereally desinged in such a way that: Separate Self = Clouding over= thought stream when that is not cut/Trekchö, the clouding mechanism starts: Reality is "out" there/external/duality, "solid/material, and limited (visual field bubble has an imagined border) not infinite. Switch off the separate self thought/feeling flow, the illusion-system ("out" there/external, "solid/material, and limited) gets switched off). That design of Reality makes complete sense: Samsara NEEDS this illusion (external/duality, solid, not infinite) The illusion can be dissolved by aligning to Reality (EMPTY IMPERSONAL JUST AWARENESS, NOT separate self-illusion).when that is practiced to make the mindstream conform to Reality, the illusion arisings (external/duality, solid, not infinite) fall away. Yoga of One Taste And in that nondual impersonal state of Infinite nondual mere appearance/lucid/not solid Infinite Consciousness, one can dissolve the final subtle illusion: Subtle Separateness of a Transparent witness, still coloured by Individuality and Separateness. Yoga of Nonmeditation. I can only highly recommend you to read the book, start the practice (similiar as described below) over a longer time period, and see what happens. Psychedelics only lift the veil mainly concerning this here (external/duality, solid, not infinite). But they don't dissolve the Illusion mechanism, the clouding over. Let's describe it in Engineering-language: The separate self is a positive feedback-loop: Uncut/Untranscended thought-stream including separate self I-thoughts/I-feelings triggers a system that cause these illusion arisings for the visual field: illusion arisings (external/duality, solid, not infinite). And also regular dissatisfaction/suffering, which make the ego work on its next salvation-project to bring experiences that bring bliss and relieve. The endless circle of suffering, N+1. and an enormously stable clouding-over illusion system of the separate self. Works in Billions of people, normally nobody wakes up just by chance. Some do, then its normally Karma or something the like. But extremely few. Cut that system, at some point the cutting/Treckchö becomes self sustaining: positive feedback loop. Because its lovely, brings bliss. And before that tilting point, it takes energy, because its unpleasant. A negative feedback-loop while meditating. Mayas Illusion-protection-mechanism. Must be there, else everybody would be meditating. Then, via keeping the mindstream cut/Trekchö/Transcended, another positive feedback loop sets in: The Endohuasca-system gets triggered. This then makes the visual field mere appearance/lucid/not solid/infinite, and especially duality/externality goes. Brown calles it Boundless Timeless Awake Awareness/Consciousness. And resting in that brings even way more bliss, which allows dissolving core elements/Traumas of the separate self, and staying lucid in daily life also with problems. In these states, the last remnants of the separation-illusion are dissolved... Try to think in "positive-feedback-loops", and tilting points/mountain-passes to reach, having climed in goes downhill or automatic/nice/blissful. and initial uphill-climbs to get to the first downhill-track after crossing the mountain pass height Willpower/Suffering while meditating until a certain point, then blissfull/downhill/automatic. Then, ego/Trauma/pain throws curve ball, and the current meditation/bliss fails. Further practice. Momentum building. Gradually dissolving of the separate self contraction and suffering, bliss gets stronger. Increasingly, more and more difficult life situation can be handled lucid. And the magic point is, after some years: Sitting somewhere on a park bench, the bliss flowing, and: realizing the freedom & fullness of not needing anything. Water by the River From this Link: For me, the crucial Point for really getting the meditation "really" off the pillow into daily life was getting to THAT here Skill of Recognition: (1. Yoga of Mahamudra system) Now it gets interesting. That was the decisivepoint for me once I understood that, and implemented it. Afterwards, it started to get nondual pretty soon... If you look HOW the thoughts emerge, (1) out of what they emerge, (2) what they are, (3) in what they move (4) into what they disappear ALL of that (1)(2)(3)(4) must be present. Thoughts DO appear. From "something". Stay in "something". Consisting of "something" All of that is Emptiness, or Consciousness, or Nothingness. Thoughts are made of "that","move in that", "dissolve into that". and you will never SEE that, or can say what it is. Nothing. But not a blank nothing. An aware Nothing. Actually the essence of all world-appearances, but that comes later, when it gets nondual, at the Yoga of One Taste. What happens if you investigate into emerging thoughts this way, is that they get FASTER. VERY FAST. Like 20-30 emergent thoughts/feeling arisings per second, most of them rudimentary. The mind does this to keep the illusion going. To make it too fast for you. But at some point, you learned to get that fast also... Basically, looking into a thought, one sees its Emptiness/Nothingness (one doesn't find the thought, it evaporates). It is cut off. Dzogchen calls this cutting off "Trekchö". Daniel Brown called this stage a "High Speed Search Task into the unfindability of the nature of thoughts". A High Speed Search task into their emptiness, into their nature as consciousness, as Nothingness. So the emerging gets fast, very fast. Daniel Ingram also mentions that. But at some point, with enough practice and familiarity, YOU get faster. You spot and cut off every very fast, subtle, fragmentary thought arising. None of them "grips" you anymore, since you have seen them all, and their structure. Just thoughts arising very fast. You don't control which thoughts arise. Depended origination, they are just emerging by themselves. You can focus on just their arising (of thoughts), just their staying, just their going away. At some point, they just emerge, looking into their nature is automatic, and they immediately dissolve. No duration. Just emergence, and poof gone. And when you are fast enough, you get a continuance of staying mindful. When that happens its pretty clear what happened. Your attention got so fast that you can stay mindful even through the high-speed thought emergence. At the end, they come very fast, they don't get "elaborated out". Thinking, or elaborating the thoughts out, is slower than their emergence. They emerge already fully complete with their content, and then slowly get "talked/elaborated" in your mind. Natural reaction: So WHO the f*** am I (pardon my french) when I don't control what thoughts emerge and if they appear fully with their content in a fraction of a second, and get elaborated later in a hypnotic show over several second? good question... to be answered later. Outcome is: You know the nature of every possible thought (Consciousness-Emptiness-Nothingness), of the whole mental-continuum of thoughts, all that there can be. Their nature. you can cut off or transcend/just watch your normal mindstream in most daily situations without getting caught up/hypnotized by it, which already here leads to a lot of bliss. Not sufficient bliss to get ones separate self completely handled, but already quite wonderful. That is the start of real freedom. You know how your mindstream hypnotizes you, and gets faster when you actually look into each thought arising and its nature. At some point you get fast enough to cut off every arising, or let it elaborate in a controlled aka mindful way. @UnbornTao Oh please hit me. Instead of watching some nice travel-documentation as planned on TV yours truly did again the overkill...

Same in Mahamudra: "Tashi Namgyel's crossing-over [to Enlightenment] instructions are as follows: The likely time is when the practitioner has refined any intense experiences of nonconceptual stillness, clarity, or bliss, and then continuously meditates, having attained certainty letting the mind's [natural] brightness and clarity come forth in awareness," Brown, Pointing out the Great Way Selling Water by the River

Beautifully written. Reminded me on this here: Water by the River

Really Inspiring. Bon voyage on your path, that will walk itself soon enough all by itself, just following the bliss of its own essence. The Path showing itself to itself, after having won the grace of your True Nature. Some day, there will no one walking this path anymore. The path will become the unfolding of Infinite Reality itself. A Reality so wonderful expressing itself in every moment that no interference will ever be necessary again, or even possible again.... The states that can be achieved by meditation and energetic techniques are real and very powerful with enough practice. Most people get quite serious when they see that: The awakened states of for example infinite Nonduality, or Real Impersonal No-Self - Impersonal Infinite Consciousness Suchness, do have their impacts on the brainwaves, and for sure for the body-own Endo-Huasca-System producing a cocktail of body-endogenous Psychedelics: https://dmtquest.org/endohuasca-magic/ How else to explain the powerful infinite nondual awakened states achieveable by Psychedelics can be had with meditation and energetic practices, and which are so similiar to the Psychedelic experiences? Yes. Because it is a stage that has been earned by transformation and transcendence. States that have become permanent as stages. Going from states, to plateaus, to very permanent stages. And the remaining self doing these practices gets more and more refined. Pure. Impersonal. Empty. Transcendal. Not the remains of a separate ego/self, switched on and off by psychedelics, but never fully gone. The remains hindering the Full Realization in daily life, and are also projected on Infinite Consciousness during the trip, disfiguring its pure empty impersonal nature. So some lense always remain that prevent the final deep shift of Full Enlightenment. Ken Wilber: "The downside comes with people that only use psychedelics or drugs. And I found that over the years they just become mean it's somehow I just kind of closes them down. Its like you keep doing it and you keep doing it you keep doing and it doesn't quite cause the transformation. It can cause a peak experience but generally not a transformative experience and some people like David Deida will say that in order for altered changes of state to contribute to transformationpermit transformation it has to be basically endogenous not exogenous. It has to be has your own source. The people that do use both [psychedelics and meditation] and use it as a sacrament I think an enormous bit out of it. " Anybody ever wondered why that is? That Spirit/Infinite Reality prevents the crossing over through the Gateless Gate to Full Enlightenment if the soul is not purified enough, the separate-self/ego-illusion emptied out and transcended completely, all deaths died, all illusions gone? Maybe it is not a bug, but a deep deep feature? If we admit Infinite Intelligence to Infinite Reality, maybe Infinite Reality demands and requires giving up and transcending certain last subtle lenses also, letting the Illusion of separation fully die? And a high degree of compassion and some kind of Boddhisattva-vow? Because Infinite Reality itself IS Love? A fundamental archetype of manifestation, of essence? Sounds familiar and resonates? This combination of Transcendence and love is a deep structure of all spiritual systems of all ages. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj — 'Love says 'I am everything.' Wisdom says 'I am nothing.' Between the two, my life flows.' Water by the River

True. I think you would like the Mahamudra-system a lot. Yoga of One Taste is the Neti Neti path to its end, Yoga of Nonmeditation throws away each and any effort and reamaining separte-self doing anything: One just rests in nondual state that one knows very well then, and waits for the grace of crossing over. Gateless Gate. "One can do NOTHING here to cross over to Full Enlightenment/Basis Enlightenment. Because that would be an act of a separate self. An effort. A movement of a separate self WANTING something, manipulating the mindstream, grasping for the understanding, doing something.... One can only automize the meditation/mindfullness, staying fully present, letting the Awakened Impersonal Awareness flow by itself, let IT do the meditation itself, get out of the way... Bringing out the full force of this Utterly Impersonal Awakened Awareness. Ones True Identity. And that is the last contra-intuitive trap: ONE CAN'T FORCE IT ("artifical activity"). Because forcing it would be a separate self arising doing it. One can try to force it (for example Koan-style), but then the Crossing Over normally happens in a moment of grace, of relaxation, when artificial activity is not present." Selling Water by the River

Yes i understand that, but don't you think that this is still somehow limited? No. Go see for yourself. It is the only and final Realization that comes with "no more n+1 Awakenings". That is where the exquisite peace lies. Any other further Awakening after the Full Realisation of what you really are can only be insight into more form/manifestation. One can theoretically (and practically) become aware of all of Indras Infinite Net in all its endless possible dimensions. Go exploring it. ALL OF IT. How its imagined/created, up to Buddhafield-Entities creating and managing whole Universes. There are more than enough Trip Reports about that, often centuries old, but also contemporary. Let me know if you want links. Nothing I have seen on this site here I have not found in essence somewhere else also when it comes to the topics above. Hard to find, but can be found. And that (above) still wouldn't be the Abyss of Fully Empty Infinite Boundless Impersonal Consciousness, the one Infinite Reality without a second. YOU. The real YOU, not the Illusion of what you mistake yourself to be right now. It would be just more form. More form Of God fooling itself in n+1 ways. But still only more form, or the manifested side of Infinite Consciousness. Not the unmanifested empty essence of Infinite Consciousness. (Of course both are nondual, but one "side" is eternal and timeless, and the show passes and ends in time). So: If one knows who one is, one knows who one is. And it is then known that all possible forms/arisings can only be dreams, a magic show, a beautiful (or not so beautiful) illusion, a play. All of it, n+1. That final Realization is where all pointers end, duality collapses IN YOU, and nothing can be prooven by just using language. Only YOU can REALIZE it by BEING IT. Water by the River And if you want to see an answer on that question as authentic reaction on video, below it is. But find out for yourself. Nobody can proove you that. Only you can realize it by BEING it. Choose who you believe, and listen deeply into your heart while doing so. In your case, the answer won't take long. Consider it takes Neti Neti to the final end, and ask yourself who you assume could have done that. And who hasn't done that. Pointer here: Daily life and conduct. At the end, Realization finds itself in conduct. If not, probably a not a too blissfull "Realization". And then place your bet, and walk the path (and your path) to its very end. PS: And if you are so inclined, go hunt the Aliens AFTER knowing who YOU really are. If you are so inclined...

Awareness is only aware OF itself within its dualistic dream, which is existence. It's a subtle but significant point: the absolute is inherently and essentially awareness, beyond existence. To realize awareness requires the illusion of boundaries, but beyond boundaries, awareness is without requiring the appearances of forgetting and realization. Yes. "It" never (could) loose its eternal nature of Awareness. As the only Infinite Aware Reality without a second. If one fully understands what you just wrote... that alone is enough. Beautifully written. And that Awareness can be unaware of itself prooves its fully Empty Impersonal Nature. That is the point I want to bring across, above all else. Neti Neti to the final end, where concepts have long stopped working. Never stop early while the separate-self-gestalt-arisings are not fully transcended. And having walked the path of Neti Neti to its end: Infinite and Everything/Nondual. The pointer (fully empty impersonal nature, or Neti Neti) is the ticket for the way back home, And "can be unaware of itself" prooves this pointer. If IT would be anything other than empty/no thing/infinite, IT could look over its shoulder to see itself. IT can't. When IT does (or better tries), looking deeply into oneself in meditation, it/one has an experience of Emptiness/Nothingness. quod erat demonstrandum Water by the River

True.

Jac O'Keffee: "I even heard a Nondual speaker say that Awareness is always aware of itself. [No] it is not. Sure it has [mostly] the experience of being aware of itself but: It is totally possible for awareness to be without being aware of itself. It totally shows itself to not have any clue that it exists at all. You pull away existence there is no sense of itself. " Or Pure Impersonal Consciousness unaware of itself: Possible. No Self-reflective anything appearing in it. And because that is possible, Infinite Consciousness/Awareness is fully empty, impersonal, infinite. Nothingness. And can be unaware of itself. But with the potential for sentience/awareness. When an appearance shows up. And self-awareness as soon as any identity/indivduality/separate-self-arising appears, and the self-reflective mind starts... Selling Water by the River

It for sure does. That is what happens in most cases. Which is why a good map is essential. Good pointers, not pointers halfway up the mountain. Suffering doesn't stop halfway up the mountain. For example: More on that here: Selling Water by the River

@Bazooka Jesus If I ever need a clown, I am going to hire the one-and-only Bazooka JESUS! Oh, I need one. Guess everbody better does Love your posts man, really do... Water by the River

Ok, agree, but once you change to a state, let's say, deep, silent, non-dual... even here, you are still limited. You have broken the ice surface of the bottomless pond, but the magnetism that the surface exerts is too strong. You are floating in infinity but you cannot immerse yourself in it, half of your body is still floating, your vision is short. yes. That is why nondual-unity states are not necessarily yet fully impersonal. Normally it is a stage on the path where the separate self finally dies and is seen through/transcended. Bit by bit. The full death/transcendence of the separate self (towards becoming (as Deep Identity) the Totality of Infinite Impersonal Consciousness/Awareness, independend of whatever shows up) needs a long time of ripening in the nondual state, to transcend the last subtle remnants of any kind of individuality/separateness. To go from nondual-unity to impersonal/no individuality/full infinite real Nonduality. Or waking up. @Bazooka Jesus: Quod erat demonstrandum Selling Water by the River

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekchö In Dzogchen, trekchö (khregs chod) means "(spontaneous) cutting of tension" or "cutting through solidity." "dropping of all of your contextualizations & interpretations" Definitely the case for the guy with the helmet. Isn't that why you are here? Are you not entertained? Selling Water by the River