OnePointTwo

I agree with epikur: To be or not to be? The suffering of the dying is always forgotten.

Investigate your reality and use forums when you're having difficulty crossing barriers. I think the mods here need to step up their standards and delete the pointless, vague, rambly and short posts.

My advice is to look for communities where everyone has the same mindset. Don't limit yourself to 'spirituality' communities; architecture, music and film hold many insights (as long as you stay away from the pretentious people). Remember that communities consist entirely of individuals. Most of them won't have their thoughts straight and consequently will have nothing meaningful to discuss.

It's a good question. I like the comparison of investment between bodybuilding and spirituality. Amateur music and art also appear to be more mainstream despite how difficult they are to master.

For sure. But if you and your family were thrown into the wilderness with nothing, making fire and tools would take priority over spirituality. Look at the forces in society. The industrial capitalism force has been trying to create subservient robots for centuries and the social media force has been trying to shape wealthy people's egos in it's favour for decades. These are strong forces. AI and automation is helping to satiate industrial capitalism and giving people new-found freedom, but only the few who escape the lure of popular culture due to strong discipline or social rejection are using it to pursue wisdom.

This is the answer. From the perspective of society, highly conscious individuals are counter-productive.

Most people already do this. They differentiate between your levels by asking "did you like it", "was it enjoyable" vs. "is it good", "did it get a good score", "how does it compare to Other Thing?". Yes, artistic standards are the key. Standards are to criticism what time is to racing. The standards the would put a symphony above a pop song are derived from the Western Canon.

The desire to be left alone and not heard could also be considered the illusion of self. Your statement isn't reductionistic because it's wrong, it's reductionistic because I'm clearly considering things at a lower level. Reducing human psyche to "the illusion of self" is as severe as reducing our choices in life to deterministic physics and chemical reactions.

Conclusion: axiom's reality is unstable.

I think I finally understand "everything is love". Our values are rooted in love. We can't escape love. We see the world through a lens distorted by love. Love is bias. Hatred is a response to things that threaten what we love.

Why are you deleting people?

Reductionism

Where did our desire to be heard and understood come from? Family? Social media? Why can't we scream into the void?

These days I assume nobody will hear me, unless my art has the potency of a lightning bolt.

Thank you for sharing this perspective. There are some people who are a little mentally ill or unusual, but there are also the people that Tyler mentioned. She called them narcissistic, but I'm going to call them egocentric and ignorant until I know narcissistic is an apt description. They drag everyone into their gross little place that they have architected with little basis in reality. It makes it impossible for a coherent conversation to be had, unless everyone comes to a mutual agreement to ignore them.

I came to this forum expecting everyone to be on the same page. I thought there would be more people like Leo. (I edited out the part where I called people unhinged. Probably not helpful)

One of my favourite songs is Walking on a Dream by Empire of the Sun. I was taking a listen to the lyrics, and they sound Nondualistic. Am I projecting? [Verse 1] Walking on a dream How can I explain? Talking to myself Will I see again? [Pre-Chorus] We are always running for the thrill of it, thrill of it Always pushing up the hill, searching for the thrill of it On and on and on we are calling out, out again Never looking down, I'm just in awe of what's in front of me [Chorus] Is it real now? Two people become one I can feel it Two people become one [Verse 2] Thought I'd never see The love you found in me Now it's changing all the time Living in a rhythm where the minute's working over time

Did you read my four paragraph explanation? What part didn't you agree with? I provided a cause for the universe.

That's interesting, I'll think about it over the next few days. I did mention that my explanation relies on thermodynamics, so change is necessary. This thread is titled "why does atheism even exist", implying that the big bang is less rational than a 'creator'. The creation myth also involves change, so if we deconstruct time, this thread becomes pretty incoherent.

@Breakingthewall

"Quotes are the conclusion. Search for the reasoning" - OnePointTwo

actualized.org moment

Yes But there is clearly change, or at least the illusion of change. When I drop a rock in a pool of water, there is a splash, ripples and then eventually, everything is calm. I could give 1000 other examples. They all start with an impulse and end with stillness.

Holykael has an industrial filter that blocks out any insightful information.

First, realise that the "whole" is something that exists and is not predicated on anything else. In science, the whole is the entirety of the universe or multiverse. In Christianity, the whole is the Earth and Heavens. In Nondualism, the whole is you! God, consciousness, or reality. You could call the whole 'one' and everything outside the whole 'zero'. In maths, the whole can be divided into parts called 'two', but this isn't a given in nondualism, since God is inseparable. Second, consider quantifying the energy, mass, spirit or flux of the whole. It is infinity. But, it is in a state that changes over time. How does it change? Everything suggests that entropy increases. In other words things are expanding, order is decreasing, the universe is cooling, things are becoming more stable. Eventually, all energy will be evenly distributed. An infinite space will be filled with an energy level of 1/infinity. Nothing can possibly happen because there is no usable energy. This is the end of the universe, and there is no point recording time after this point, because without change, there is no time. Time wouldn't abruptly stop, but the lack of movement would make time slow down until eventually the smallest change takes an infinte amount of time. Third, consider the opposite of infinite space with an energy level of 1/infinity. It's a 1/infinite wide point of space with an energy level of infinity. The Big Bang. Just like the end of the universe is very slow, the beginning of the universe is very fast. Things change quickly. That explains why there is nothing before the big bang, because time is infinitely fast at that point. In other words, as you approach the beginning of the universe, change happens in an infinitesimal amount of time. Therefore you can't go 1 second before the big bang. That's not even the most interesting part. Consider what the laws of physics are. They are a set of rules that take a universe from an infinite point to infintely dispersed field of 1/infinte energy. They could be 10th dimensional. Most scientists believe our universe has these properties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_physical_constants. If any of these constants were different, you would not exist as you do now. You should believe that your consciousness created these, because you'll find they are pretty fundamental if you go digging. If you can disprove one of these values, enjoy the Nobel prize. This explanation of the universe is consistent with nonduality. It means the "whole" exists for infinite time, it does not have a beginning or end. Also, I'd like to state for the 10th time that I don't believe science can explain truth. The physics of a cup does not tell you anything about its design, usage, history or value. Physics is just the rules of a game with unknowable depth.