Clarence

At this level, it is easier for me to grasp. But it is not as easy human to human. I've always felt like levels of consciousness were somewhat independent to human genetics. But now I don't know anymore. It makes a lot of sense like this. The notion of continuity of consciousness is important in the way I perceive things, more important than the finite human body. But in this sense, consciousness could be the reason for certain genetics to be the way they are in the first place, and so things would be reversed. Not genetics causing specific consciousness, but consciousness causing specific genetics, including at the human to human level. Indeed, it's a real strange-loop. [When I say consciousness here, I mean 'individual' consciousness (in absence of a better word).]

But then… his consciousness here is somewhat independant from his body, as it kept evolving with different genetics.

Ok, I did not see that, but thinking more deeply, it actually seems true. It's a bit confusing to me though. Even scary. I thought that what made my consciousness the way it was was my consciousness itself, not my particular body and genes. It flips everything upside down. I've always felt like my sense of self was strongly separated from my body, as if my human body was a stranger to me, and so, as if my consciousness was independant to my body, but that way of being and sensing oneself could as well come from… my genetics. No wonder I'm confused, it brings me back to acknowledge the existence of my body, and even more so, in relation to my sense of self.

To talk about someone's level of consciousness, wouldn't the word 'innate' be more accurate than the word 'genetic'? I feel like the word genetic emphasize a strong bond with the body, pretty much as if consciousness was produced by someone's body/brain and their specific genes, while the link and relationship between someone's mind/consciousness and their body is very complex and even somehow separate, especially as we believe/have become conscious that physical death is not the end of ourselves, of our consciousness. Innate, to me, doesn't make that strong link with the body, and so better account for the nature of consciousness.

@Husseinisdoingfine Take a break; try to think about something else. Let a few days or weeks pass. You are overwhelmed by your thoughts and emotions, which prevents you from seeing clearly. Maybe this failure is meant to guide you towards something better. Many times, when we fail at something, we later realize that it was not all that bad or that it was actually good. We might be glad at some point that things happened the way they did. There are many other paths you could take. Right now, you could even take a break from studying for a year to redirect your life, and either choose to start the same major again in another university, or find another field of interest which you will end up loving as much. There are many possibilities waiting for you. You're just not in a headspace to see them right now… which is why taking a break, distracting yourself, doing something you usually like doing, spending time with a friend, or just going through the suffering you are going through, are currently some of your best options. If you think deeply enough, you might even realize that you could regret killing yourself. You are at the beginning of your life. This failure is an opportunity for growth and reflection. Life is hard. It is painful, but you will recover. You must learn to navigate life, as it will go in many unexpected directions. One of your job is to become flexible and imaginative enough to adapt and create new plans after each turn…

You probably did something wrong in the first place if someone hits you in the face.

Is there a way to answer that question? So, what we're really asking, is whether the cat makes a difference between "self'' and "not-self"? Or is it to know whether the cat actually knows the concept of cat as humans use it?

@Princess Arabia Your post made me think about something similar Matias DeStefano talks about. Here's a quote: I've just found this video in which he talks about that, if you're interested: I don't have a definitive answer on that, but I think it's nice to think about. That the universe is a cell inside [our] Mind is easier to directly realize, but the Earth could also have its own form of consciousness and so could be a conscious being with its own awareness, operating on a different level than human consciousness. It is likely to me, and in that sense, we could be the Earth's or the Universe's neurones (as he puts it). I find this interesting. That makes me wonder how it is like/could be like to be the Earth's consciousness or awareness.

There is not much choice, but it's so frustrating that people are not mature enough to handle these things.

I really wonder what those things can be.

Amazing.

How does it work? Do you listen to music you love while lying down or driving? Or is it more specific? What are the kinds of emotions/emotional state you aim to enhance with it?

OCD can be pretty serious. I have a form of it; obsessions are so strong in OCD that it can dramatically impact one's quality of life and mental health. So I understand how it can cause suicide. When something doesn't go right (most of the time, just a tiny detail in the eyes of anybody else), I get very strong reactions and obsessive thoughts about it. I can't distract myself because I am completely consumed by my thoughts. They are extremely intrusive and won't go away. I stop living normally for a few hours or days, until the thoughts and emotions slowly pass. I resist changing my mind or using a technique to calm my obsession so strongly because it feels so wrong. It’s really hard to understand, even for me, because this is not who I am most of the time; it’s my mind and extreme stubbornness controlling me. I think that I have a very deep aspiration to realize something meaningful in this life and that I am particularly strong and capable of enduring prolonged suffering. If I weren't, I would have already commited suicide. OCD obsessions are very hard to live with and often come with depression… for good reasons. So from my experience, OCD can cause serious suffering and lead to suicide if not taken care of, especially in times of crisis.

They are very primal questions (even more so as the last one is not formulated in a tactful manner) and they don't seem the most important to me. I think it would be more important for the male psyche to tap into a woman's overal way of being, feeling and thinking. Though that requires a very high level of intuition, sensitivity and integrity, as well as an effective capacity to truly listen to women and their feelings. – I think it won't ever be entirely possible for a man to fully step into a woman's shoes or for a woman to fully step into a man's shoes. It is extremely hard to do, even more so that all women and men are not identical at all in their own feminity and masculinity. There are very feminine women, but there are also very masculine woman. Even within cis women, feminity is a spectrum. I think that feminity is another important marker to identify what a woman is in conjunction with sex organs, but that's not perfect either, because there are cis woman who are not very feminine, and cis men who are more feminine than certain cis women. Overall though, a woman tends to be more feminine than a man, leading them to wear make up or dress in a feminine way, for exemple, and leading them also to be more in touch with their feelings and emotions, being more sensitive than men in general. In my opinion, the way a person feel inside is what matters most to determine a man or a woman, especially in cases where there is a lot of ambiguity. That doesn't define man and woman, but that is still an aspect to take into account in the attempt of defining those terms. I think there cannot be one simple definition of what a woman or a man is. To me, it is a vague feeling or idea. It's a mix of perceptions, of how people, men and women, look from the outside, and of how I think they think and feel from the inside, which is influenced by my own history, personality, and by everything I've ever heard, seen and thought. The clearest representation I have for what a man and a woman is, is a spectrum in which on one hand is the most stereotypical man one can think of (cis male body, cis male appearance and characteristics, cis male psyche), and on the other hand, the most stereotypical woman one can think (cis female body, cis female appearance and characteristics, cis female psyche). And as we move toward the center of that spectrum, the simplified representation of what it means to be a man or a woman starts to blur; it ceases to be so simple. One could still be a woman, but lacking the stereotypical female appearance, psyche, or body, or any combination of these traits - up to the extent where one would start leaning more towards the center of the spectrum or toward the beginning of the male side. There are so many humans on Earth, with so many differences in-between them, that it is mind-blowing to see that some people think it is easy and possible to divide them all into just two categories—two categories that should determine and define something extremely fundamental and core to their entire being.

@Pudgey I'm currently at the stage of doing research, so I honestly don't know much at this point. But from what I've been reading and hearing so far from people having had NDE and having done past-life regression to the time in-between lives, it seems that it all points out to a similar direction, which is a continuation of our current self in the spirit world. There are obviously variations and I haven't had any of these experiences myself, but I think it is something worth looking into. I understand that everything is imaginary - but this reality is imaginary also, and still, there are laws and systems in our world to make it all work. So to me, the imaginary nature of reality is not an argument to prove that after this life, it is just blank and up to our own imagination only. We could as likely go back to a place we came from, to a world we know but forgot all about (another dimension as many call it that way). Many come back from such experiences with a similar story, which can't fully be explained by the idea that "whatever you think will happen after death, will happen". Many don't think much over their own death and don't have a preconceive idea; in that sense, they don't activaly control the experience, but still, what they tell that happened to them is coherent with many other testimonies. None of this contradicts the absolute nature of God. God is still infinite, eternal and pure imagination - and all that is. But in this reality, it is as if we were one expression of God, living in a world we haven't designed, as we are far too limited to do so. There is no evidence that after death, there is just us, being God, and imagining whathever we want in hyper-space. That could be possible, but there are far more evidence that we will go back to a reality in which we are far more conscious than this current one, and in which we are far less limited, but in which some individuation is still taking place, and in which we will continue living (before reincarnating on Earth or doing something else). I don't hold hard beliefs or fantasies about what happens after death, but I wish to keep an open mind and learn as much as I can on this topic with the material we currently have. And maybe, have my own direct experiences at some point. The narrative that we will be infinity is not satisfying to me and it is not necessarily true. There are more evidence that we will still exist as an energy body and as an individual mind. God is infinity. We are God, but rather, we are one fragment of what God is inside this giant Infinity It is, and we won't necessarily go back to being God/Infinity right away after death, as that would be the complete end of our individual Self. Maybe that's what you are discribing, the complete annihilition of your self, in which your sense self and individuation compelety cease to exist and where you then become all of existence. That would be the ultimate death of the self, in which there would not even be a you imagining anymore as I view it from this lense… but the human death doesn't seem to be that at all.

Thanks for your answers. So it means that one's imagination plays a big role in guiding these trips, more than the simple intent of exploring something completely new? That's extreme. Do you think it could have been (or could be) possible to have such deep expereriences without getting close to physically dying?

@Leo Gura Can you tell us about how many of these awakenings you've had? And if they were all very different from one another? You gave us a lot of details about one of them (the alien kangaroo-mouse). I wonder if the others were somewhat similar to this one or if they were completely different. I also wonder if you wrote reports after each of these awakenings (even if just for yourself)? I'm still very interested in this topic and can't wait to have my first experiences. From my last few trips, I now better understand what it means that the trips build on top of each other. It now makes sense to me that the first few trips (you even said the first hundred trips, I think) are nothing. I could not fully make sense of that until recently. Now it's really obvious.

Yes, I think it is a good way to get some understanding about what can happen at the moment of death, but obviously it doesn't give much answers about what happens after that. Maybe past-life regressions for remembering the time in-between lives can help for that specific part, or reading testimonies as well. But it must be nice to do the regression for oneself or to get access to that knowledge through other direct means.

I know that; it doesn't contradict what I say. Whether you want to call it magic or something else, I understand that there doesn't have to be any rules after life; I'm just saying that there could be some - in the sense that, maybe after we die, we still aren't completely free or still have some limitations, despite transcending all of them in the reality we know. Maybe there is still some "order" after human death. But then again, maybe there is none. I just tend to think that we can't know for sure what happens unless we die, as there can't be 100% certainty that what we've realized in this life is what will happen after dying. We can know that it is all an illusion, among quite many other things, but we can't know what a human who has lost their life experiences exactly.

Death/physical death is imaginary, but there must still be a major shift happening within one's consciousness when it occurs, and we might not get to know for sure how that shift unfolds. I feel like realizing that death is imaginary doesn't completely answer how that shift (and the afterlife) will be like when dying, and that it is much easier to realize the imaginary nature of death than it is to know what the process of death will be like exactly. Obviously I'm not sure, but seeing how limited we are as human, it would kind of make sense to have a certain process in place (with maybe a sense of continuity), as there likely is a sort of process in place also for a human to be born (even if that is imaginary). As life on Earth and in the universe is such a grand orchestration that we are not at all in control of, it would be plausible if there were some "set rules" also at play at the moment of death. So I quite agree that we might not be able to get all the precise answers unless we actually die. Though, I'd love to be wrong and to know of a way to find out all the details.

How can one be sure that the process of physical death is the exact same as the process of God/Love Realization on psychedelics? As people have completely different experiences on psychedelics, wouldn't it make more sense that people would also have different experience going through death and right after death? For exemple, some might experience infinite love while others might experience confusion or something else? I'm not completely sure of what you mean when you say that "death is love". I understand it as: anyone who dies, directly experiences love. But if that's what you're saying, I wonder how certain that can be.

I'm sorry to hear for your grandfather. That's really though that it lasted so long for him. Indeed, it could have been worse for her, but it also could have been much better, so it's still hard to accept. You're right that it will take time. It's been two weeks already and it's still hard to fully realize or believe that she has passed. The mind is so shocked it can't properly process the information. It is such a weird state to be in. Hopefully, it is the case for her… though I still have no certainty about that. I hope it is the case, but I don't have any way to be sure of it right now. When I was at the funeral home the day after she passed, I could feel a lot of love and energy in the room. I felt at home near her, as I had promised that I would stay by her side to the end. That energy stayed with me for some time after, but then it passed. I don't know to which extent I created this energy or actually perceived it. I don't think it is a guarantee that all souls experience complete love and freedom after they pass. Maybe that's what happens to all, but also, maybe not. Perhaps the transition from life to death is harder for some. So I hope her current path is not too hard now, and that she indeed experienced, or is experiencing, that complete love and freedom…

One second I was with my grandmother, the next second, she was gone. I am heartbroken and feel so much guilt and regrets for all the things I haven't done for her. The last 6 months, I had become exhausted of living with her. I had enough. I had stopped doing my best for her, as if I had let her go already. Her death was sudden and completely unexpected at this time. She woke up one morning with a swollen and painful leg, the doctor and palliative nurse decided to give her morphine for the pain. But it all went downward from then. She had all kinds of weird reactions to the drug, we wondered if she wasn't too confused and lost in her mind on it. As the day went by, she completely stopped standing, eating on her own and talking. We wanted to replace the morphine because her reaction didn't feel comfortable and because I thought she wouldn't have any chance to come back if we didn't, but her state didn't improve after changing medecine. By the fourth and fiftth day after that first morning, she couldn't move a muscle anymore. She couldn't lift her arm to her face, and she coudn't give us a single reaction when we asked if she felt pain. The pain in her leg started on the 16th of july, early morning (or night). And by the 20st, she was gone. She passed at 11h55 pm, with my mother and I by her side. Her capacity to breath had started to disminish a few hours before, and then she suffocated. She was trying hard to inhale air, but she couldn't anymore. She was in a deep form of sleep with the morphine we had started back and another medecine called scopolamine, which is used to prevent people from drowning when the lungs fill up with liquid. We could hear the sound of the liquid when she breathed the last hours. It was a traumatizing end, for her and for us. Her last five days and the moment of her death were really difficult and painful. She was the sweetest person, so it feels even harder to know that she suffered so much. All the nurses and doctors we called the last two days were completely incompetent (it was the weekend). And it was not a good thing to give her morphine on the first day to start with. My mother and I still struggle to feel at peace with all that happened. It's really painful, and my mother and I really regret not to have done better for her the last few months. We were exhausted, but we feel so much regrets and guilt, that we feel we could have done better. It's really, really sad. And we miss her.

@Lila9 Thank you for your nice words. It's really sweet and brings some comfort...

Thanks. We'll see. But the truth is that we don't exactly know what happens after death. Maybe it's confusing to die in such a way with all the drugs and such a rapid, unexpected, decline. I really wonder how she experienced all this… Maybe she still wanted to stay with us, but we performed all the wrong actions for her to die. Though now, I'm really curious to go through my own death. So you're right. That's one of the thoughts that give me peace. I want to know what happens, at least for me. But it's a bit depressing that I might need to wait 60 years or more if I were to die of old age :'(