Telepresent

Also (sorry my phone won't let me quote): if you really, really, really, REALLY KNOW that there is no you... why do you care what is manifest?

@Echoes The point is that I don't conclude that there are correct or incorrect desires. Like you suggest, a desire or lack of desire is neither right or wrong. But the fulfilment of that desire is a ALSO neither right or wrong. You are playing that the non-manifestation of your desire is FACTUALLY wrong. I'm suggesting you question that thought. The problem comes down, as other people have suggested, to the idea of WHO or WHAT is selecting your reality. If it is you, then rejoice! There is no need for this thread as you can manifest whatever you want because you are in control and whatever we have to say is codswallop. But if it is NOT you... If the universe is manifesting shit you don't want... Then you have to ask why that is? And a good place to start is what you want to manifest. You can learn an awful lot in the gap between what you want, and what is

Yup. That's the question. Chase it. I'm not saying manifestation of what you don't want is independent of your sense of self. You're making an interpretation there: that manifestation MUST meet your desires (meaning your desires are a: correct, and b: independent of their own manifestation before they are used to manifest a physical experience). The trick is assuming that your personal ideas or desires or needs have anything to do with objective reality. Until you can strip one from the other manifestation cannot make sense

You're assuming here that the manifestation from the field of possibilities has anything to do with YOUR desires. But your desires are the RESULT of the field of possibilities. As is the non-manifestation of them, and your resultant feelings and thoughts about the law of attraction. If there's a field of infinite possibilities, what is choosing which possibilities are manifested? Is it you? Has your experience to this point in any way suggested it is you?

@The Universe I think this depends upon one's definition of enlightenment (as there seem to be many, and everyone thinks theirs is correct - including me). Which of course would suggest that it DOESN'T depend on perspective, ultimately, but we're only going to get perspective based answers. My perspective is no. I'm not really a fan of the word enlightenment. Or any of the terms. I prefer 'what the fuck is actually going on?' And that cannot be a question of paradigm. There meet be an is. Doesn't matter how many paradigms you want to play with; if they're not is, then they are not

Hello again. I don't have a specific reply to what you've written above, but there are a few key words and a feeling that I want to keep up a dialogue with you for now, so that's what I'm doing. I hope that makes sense and doesn't seem rude as a motivation for writing this? I'm playing with / working out how to follow ripples or clues from the universe as to my next action, and right now it's a bit of a blunt instrument! how are you doing?

That's the big 'what if?', isn't it? Although I have to say I'm a little wary of questions like that: I see a lot of people asking questions about what it's like to be enlightened, in lieu of actually going and finding out for themselves. If it's a light little wondering, that's fine, but if it's a distraction from actually sitting down and doing the work... maybe not

Yep, sorry, you're right. Got my figures wrong! That's what I get for going from memorey... Bleh! Still, the takeaway is the same, regardless of the maths: I'm not sure what anyone who is enlightened would be doing on a forum like this. I just... I struggle to understand what purpose they would have here. Thanks for keeping me to account, though - (I'm so worried I'm coming off as patronising here and I really don't mean to: I'm trying to be very honest in my life now hence this ridiculous disclaimer!) - it's good to be called up as a false prophet

@Nahm Absolutely. Our resistance is much more restrictive than we think. For example, we can play a thought experiment, where I say that reality is a bit like the Matrix, some kind of virtual reality environment, blah blah blah, and so long as I keep that as a descriptive tool, that's fine. And now I say, NO, LISTEN, I AM TELLING YOU THAT YOUR REALITY IS FALSE. THAT EVERYTHING YOU BELIEVE IN IS A LIE. THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE DON'T EXIST, THE THINGS YOU DESIRE ARE IMAGINARY, YOU WILL NEVER EVER BE CONTENT BY CHASING HAPPINESS, AND YOU - THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL THING YOU BELIEVE YOURSELF TO BE - IS A TRICK OF PERSPECTIVE... It's not quite so fine, is it? Why not? Emotion. If you honestly look at that statement, and you honestly respond to it, I expect you will have an extremely resistant reaction to it. Because it's obviously bullshit, isn't it? It's obviously bullshit. The world exists, you exist, I exist, you exist as some sort of *whatever* inside the head, and we need to focus on worrying about the practicality of out lives. OBVIOUSLY. You know how people say "you're already enlightened"? And how fucking annoying that is? It's because, in a sense, you are. This is it and it is this and whatever you are experiencing in it is correct. But if it demands you dig... You need to question all of those statements. Do you exist? Does the world exist? If you do, and you're inside the head, where? As thought? Ok, so what is thought? As emotion? Ok, so what is emotion? Dig Dig Dig. And the most important, the MOST important question is what you highlight: resistant thinking. What is it? What is it doing? Why is it doing it? If you dissolve all that is false, then only truth can remain. So there's no real point in pursuing truth: the better thing is to eliminate the false. Remember Sherlock Holmes: once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains - however improbable - must be the truth. Leap into your resistance. Work out what it is, why it is there, what it is protecting, and don't let it pull you off-task until you know what the fuck is going on. Good luck

@Aditi Also: as you mention sitting still, I'm assuming you're meditating. Are you doing anything else? What do you expect from meditation? (That's not a judgement question - it's pure: what do you think/hope will happen by meditating? We start from the basics)

Not quite. His prediction is that less than one in 100,000 people take to the idea, and one in 100,000 of those people make it. Leaving only around 40-50 truth-realised people on the planet at any given time (I haven't done the maths to check if that adds up, by the way). But that's only his statement. Others say other things. Don't trust either of them, don't worry about it. Focus on you. I can't really see that anyone who's made it would have any interest in a forum like this, unless they have an extremely generous sense to help people they can't be certain really exist to reach a state that's no better or worse than any other (in their perspective) So I doubt anyone here is

I like the perspective Jed McKenna has on this: he makes a point that rather than focussing on an answer, you should focus on the question. Enough time spent with any question, you eventually dissolve it and realise that the question was never really there to begin with. Meaning that the premises were wrong. That's the thing with questions: they're built upon layers and layers and layers of premises, which we have to accept and believe as true and correct and inviolable before we can ask the question. An extreme example: violence. We ask how a loving god/universe can allow violence and suffering. There's a pile of assumptions there: that god/the universe is loving (or loving in the way we think we understand it), that violence and suffering are bad, that suffering exists outside of our emotional perspective, and so on. The problem with trying to answer questions is that you have to make models. You have to model and assume and extrapolate and guess and none of these things are ever quite right. But if you investigate premises... Think of it this way. You are dealing with an incredibly complex mathematical formula. You just can't seem to resolve it. And at the very base of it, where you don't even bother to check, because you know such simple calculations are correct, is 2+2=5. Until you see that, every question you have about the more complex parts of the formula are completely invalid, because they are based on a false premise. Dig.

Cool! As for me... I've been on this forum since not too long after it started, so a little under a year. I was watching Leo's videos before he introduced spirituality into the mix (so more of his self-help side), and it was through his videos that I started investigating spirituality/consciousness. I was actually a little reluctant to join this forum at first for two reasons: 1) I feared it might be a distraction, and 2) I absolutely did not want to be in an environment where Leo, or anyone else, was treated as a 'guru'. Thankfully this isn't the case here - people are generally very critical (in the good, intelligent way) of the content of his videos, and of course share a great deal of other sources as well. In fact, the key drivers in my own journey have been introduced to me by this community in one sense or another, so I have to be grateful for that! Eh... ish. When I was a bit newer to all this, his videos were my primary source of information. As I move onwards, they're now something I check out to see if they have any further pieces to fit into the jigsaw, but it's becoming less and less. I'm very deep into a self-inquiry practice, a foundation of which is that I cannot and do not follow any teachers: I source what they say for clues, but need to investigate and verify things for myself. No outside authority! I've had a couple. I had a definite 'experience' a while ago - I'm not sure what it's best to describe it as, but I became profoundly aware of the emptiness of everything that I was looking at: that there was nothing 'beneath' or 'inside' the things I was seeing, was hearing. They just were, and that was that. I recently had a bit of a major blast to the brain, which has reshaped my perspective on pretty much everything. It's not an 'awakening' - yet - more akin to what Jed McKenna calls 'the First Step', or what Stephen Davis calls 'going into the cocoon': again I'm not sure how to describe it, except that in a shocking, frightening, and absurdly exciting flash, reality made clear and obvious sense. I threw off layers of assumed 'understanding', and found what was underneath. And now there's a lot more stripping away to do, but I'm certain I've taken a major step down a road that leads somewhere I can't quite conceive of at the moment. I don't know how that sounds - it's all a bit new and I haven't developed the language to discuss it yet - but it's a fascinating place to be. Well... that's the question, isn't it? I'm a British guy, early thirties, work in the theatre and teach at university, but recently all of these things have stopped being idenitifiers for me. They're just descriptions of what this body/mind does. My perspective on myself is therefore a little uncertain: a big tangled mass of emotional reactions to the events that happen within, to, and by the perceived body/mind, perhaps? Nice to make your aquaintance! Out of curiosity, what kind of practices do you engage in?

Can you define for us what you mean by suffering?

Hello @Anna1! A pleasure to get in touch with you. So you're new to Actualized: what brought you here? What are you hoping for, what do you expect? What do you think would challenge you? I'd be very pleased to hear about your first awakening - or subsequents - and of very course I'd be interested in hearing about your perspectives on your self. Of course, I'm also happy to answer any questions you may have in reply (which are hard to mention in the first post) - but I'm up for a chat if you is

Because our assumptions must be wrong. Thank you for posting this. I've been smacking my head against a brick wall for ages, and this... this has broken me, in the best way. I'm profoundly disturbed, frightened, and excited. Broken through something - I'm not sure I'm ever going to see the world the same way again

You know what? I'm not going to try to explain the amazingness that kept me live I don't want to pretend like it's unique it's what we as a socity go Keep working!

You have to start by worrying about what "you" are, before you worry about what will happen to "you" in the future. I don't want to sound blunt, but until you're dead you are alive, so it might do you better to condier your predicament of being alive, rather than worrying about post-death. However, if you really want to talk about it: a) what are you imagining, b) what makes them true, c) what makes them bad, d) what makes you think things could be another way? Bonus, e) do you consider yourself separate from the observed? Are you able to answer any of the above without being personally involved? And are you able to answor those questions honestly without feeling offended or bothered?

Ok, so let's not forget about this. You know why? Becuase memory is going to make it a different thing that it was. So any thought you have about it or remembered sensation about it or remember idea about it will have swung and shifted. But a little while ago this seemed incredibly important to you. As little ago as a few hours ago. As a burning brand from someone who isn't there... you can't feel relation with that nothingness. Such is paradox

We have to make assumptions all the time - I find the trick is to keep going back to re-evaluate them... I suppose an important question here is what you mean by 'real', when you refer to denying what is being observed as real. I cannot deny that there is a sensation. Does it definitely mean that this means there is a physical object out in a 'real world', which is a separate plane of reality from my experienced consciousness, and the sensation seen is created by electro-chemical signals in a brain, which has been stimulated by photons hitting the retinas in the back of my eye, which have come from a light source and rebounded some but not all of their visible wavelength... It's not so much denying real, it's questioning what is real, and checking how much is assumed/believed/taken for granted. In the case of seeing, I will NEVER in my life encounter that 'real' world. But it's so deeply ingrained in me that the 'real' world exists, that I don't even think about it - in fact any suggestion that things are otherwise is received as preposterous. But why? My experience is the sensation, not the 'real' world which I 'know' (read: believe) is out there... Just denying things isn't really of any use. But really recognising the foundations upon which my understanding/knowledge/belief is based, and then testing those foundations... that's an interesting game. "Duality is nonduality in a way". Interesting phrase. It ties in with something that I've been butting against recently: I keep trying to imagine some other place, plane, or experience as the ending point of the search. But of course that's not the case. It's this, here, now, so in many ways duality is nonduality. It's the same thing, the exact same thing, just seen in a critically different manner. Gateless gate

@aryberry I'm finding it helpful at the moment to reverse the phrase "God created man in his image", giving us "Man created God in his image". This is not so much about how we draw God as a big bearded human in the sky, but to do with the idea of perception and perceived (or awareness and appearance). We work from an assumed position that awareness/appearance requires both subject and object. This assumption needs to be checked. What it means, though, in relation to your post, is that you are imagining an observer observing nothing. Which is not nothing, because the observer exists. So from that paradigm, awareness has to demonstrate duality, because there is subject and object. The questions become; does awareness definitely imply/require separation of subject and object? How can there be nothing if there is subject and object? Are my assumptions about perception and awareness 100% irrefutably correct? Could they be wrong, and if so, how?

Speaking as someone who doesn't trust Leo, I find this an interesting question. When I say I don't trust him, I mean that I won't take anything he says on faith, or as gospel. I recognise that he's done a huge amount of research - much more than I have - and that I can use that as a shortcut into discovering about areas and ideas that I think are worth exploring, but I won't take what he says as true, or right, and neither should anyone else. At best we should take them as hypotheses to be investigated. But I think the answer to your question is (kind of) hidden within what you wrote: Sort of, but not in the way you think. It goes back to the idea of projection: the Leo you 'know and love' has almost nothing to do with Leo, or Leo's ego. It's your ego. The ego takes another person, and it projects its own wants, desires, and needs upon them. It translates what they are doing on its own terms. This is how two people can see the same action, and one person reads it as aggressive and another as merely assertive. The action is the same, but the interpretation of it changes. So I think what happens in these sorts of arena is that people subconsciously project all sorts of things onto Leo (or equivalent), and confuse what they want him to be with what he is. So people who take up arms in the name of Gura are doing so because of their need to believe that he is always right and true, and not really because of anything to do with Leo at all. He's a red herring. Of course, all of this is deeply subconscious and emotional, and will be hidden underneath layers of justification, so I'm sure most people don't think that's what they're doing, and that they have rational arguments as to why. But for those who are deeply emotionally invested in Leo and Actualized.org, I suspect this is at least a large part of why.

The thing is, what you're doing here is assuming that your 'recognition' is de facto true. You see, 'judgement' has a negative connotation in our language, so we automatically take it to mean 'negative judgement' - i.e. "that person is a bastard", "this person is ugly", "that person is stupid", etc. But 'recognition', as you term it here, is also a judgement. Everything you use to understand the world is. EVERYTHING. So... yeah, in practical everyday dealings in life, you have to judge, because it's the way that the human organism relates to the 'rest of the world'. Negative judgement is just a more amplified, emotional, personalised version of that recognition. Very emotional. It tends to be tied in with your beliefs, your model of the world, your 'should' perspective. The only reason "that person is a bastard" is that you have a set of rules that say they shouldn't behave like that. So judgements are loud, emotional, overt versions of this process of 'recognition', which is actually definition (i.e. your mind looking at something and deciding what it is and is not), which is all model-building. It's a very deep, very automatic process that we generally don't notice happening. We take it to be truth, or reality. So right now I can look at my table, and there's a cup, and a book, and some hand cream on the table. But if I honestly look at what I'm seeing, it's a collection of shapes and colours, and I'm mentally compartmentalising 'that one is one object, called cup; and that one is another object, called book', etc. I'm drawing the boundaries between them with my mind. I'm defining where one ends and another begins in my mind. This is just how the mind works, and you cannot stop it. It's like trying to stop thinking: the harder you try, the worse you do. Having an intention to stop judging - in my experience - will just frustrate you. Instead, the solution is awareness. Not just in terms of 'meditate more and it will go away', but of being aware of what and how you think about, shape, and define the world you encounter. Pay attention to the judgements, recognitions, and definitions you make throught the day. And then notice the judgements you make about the judgements you've made! Just see it. The rest takes care of itself over time.

@Samuel Garcia I'm not enlightened, I'm not an authority on what is 'true' or not, but your question prompted a little thought experiment in my head which provides a metaphorical answer to your question. Let's start by removing ourselves from humanity, so we don't get too personal about this. Let's say humanity flat out doesn't exist. Never did, never will. Instead, there is an advanced alien species. Let's call them the Krull. The Krull have a life span of 200 years. They have figured out suspended animation, which allows them to put their bodies into hibernation for long periods of time. They have also figured out how to directly implant a virtual reality into the brain - so films and other kinds of entertainment can be experienced from a first person perspective: You experience the film AS the main character with all the senses engaged, not just sight and sound. The Krull are interested in interstellar travel, but they can't travel faster than light. This means some pioneering Krull have volunteered to go on a one-way mission to the nearest star - a journey which will take 75 years. The spaceship is tiny to save on fuel and resources - no bigger than the space shuttle. A 75 year voyage on that would drive anyone mad! So to save our heroes' sanity (& minimise food), they are to go into suspended animation. But to keep their brains from deteriorating from non-use for such a long time, they need to be plugged into a VR system. The difference is, though, that they have to believe the life they are living, otherwise their brains will still wither (for whatever reason). So instead of watching a film, a computer sequentially generates a 75 year experience for them. For whatever reason, it's safer not to have them live a Krull life (in case they remember who they are and 'wake up'), so the VR programmers construct an imaginary species, called humans. The Krull will live a human life, with complete belief that they are human, that their sensory experiences are 100% true, for a 75 year life span, despite the fact that humans do not and never have existed. For the Krull/Humans, though, none of this is known. They remember nothing before their birth. They absolutely believe in the world their senses are telling them is out there. This is reinforced by the appearance of the billions of humans they can see, who all tell them that OF COURSE Earth and humanity are real. OF COURSE what the Krull/Human is seeing, hearing, feeling is really what is out there. And OF COURSE all other humans are feeling things too. OF COURSE they feel hunger. But do they? Remember the other humans are really just VR data. Image and sound and texture - not a living being. Does a collection of image and sound and texture feel hunger? No matter how compelling it looks and sounds, does it actually FEEL hunger? Now prove that you are not a Krull on that spaceship.

Will, sorry, I also have to ask: is this your language or someone else's? Has someone else taught you to talk about 'pure consiousness' like this? I ask because it doesn't seem like a very natural way of expressing yourself