Infinite

@Dash Us Pain Last summer during open eyed meditation, I had the epic realization that nothing exists outside of what is directly being perceived. At that exact moment, I starting uncontrollably laughing at how obvious it was this entire time; and how everyone, including myself, completely overlooked this obvious fact. I never bothered to try to explain it though, do to how outlandish this claim appears to others. I also gave up on trying to explain Enlightenment for the same reasons.

@cetus56 I was going to explain something along those lines, but you got to it before me. There's a distinction between mental awareness and existential awareness, but the two always get confused. Being consciously aware is an activity of the mind, and regardless of whether or not one is consciously aware, the ever present existential awareness always remains. Awareness can never leave, it can only be overlooked. Once the distinction between mental awareness and existential awareness is understood, the answer to "What becomes unaware?" is obvious. It's not that awareness ever left, but that the mind was no longer cognizant of the awareness that was always there. When I said "If you're not aware, you're not effectively meditating.", I was referring to the mental activity of being consciously aware. In reality, there's nothing you could really do to be aware because you already are aware. All you could ever really do is increase your conscious awareness, which is a mental activity. Enlightenment is beyond the mind because awareness is beyond the mind. You cannot add to, or reduce from awareness. You can only add to, or reduce from mental awareness. The act of "expanding" one's awareness, is simply the act of becoming more cognizant of what was already there. This is why you sometimes hear people who are enlightened saying that there's nothing anyone can do to become enlightened. This is true in a sense because you're already enlightened, since awareness is all there is, and anything you try to do to become enlightened is simply mental activity. The issue with this is that, although the process may ultimately be illusory, it completely devalues how necessary the process is.

@cetus56 How does awareness vanish? Awareness can only appear to vanish when one is unaware of the ever present awareness. It's not possible for awareness to vanish. Even in the deepest levels of Samadhi when there is only void, awareness is still present. Am I not understanding something?

You'll know the difference based on whether or not you're consciously aware throughout the process. If you're not aware, you're not effectively meditating.

If reality is what I believe it to be, does this mean I get to win the lottery tomorrow? As for Tantra/Black Magic, I have no idea. My family used to apparently perform black magic decades ago, but since I wasn't alive to see it first hand, I cannot validate whether or not they actually did...

@Socrates You're so full of shit, and you don't contribute anything constructive to this forum. @likhil I agree with @Isle of View. If you're in an environment that dismisses your spirituality, It's going to be difficult to progress. If I was in your position, creating the environment that is conducive to my progression would be my top priority. This means I would either try to convince my mother of the fact that I'm not actually wasting my time, or I'd move out of that environment entirely. Staying within an environment that doesn't allow you to be your authentic self, is not conducive to spiritual progression or self actualization.

I increased my minimum time by 2 minutes every Monday, until I got to where I wanted to be. It took 15 weeks to get to an hour.

@Socrates What the hell are you even talking about? What truth are you trying to tell us that we can't swallow? You're just talking a bunch of bullshit here. You keep saying that everyone's trying to corrupt each other with lies, but I don't see any of that occurring anywhere throughout this post. All I see is your ego going wild, thinking that it's better than everyone else here.

You're the apparent master at spotting ego lies, but you fail to spot your own...

Aren't you currently arguing your position?

I actually agree with you. I don't think I'm mentally prepared for this at all.

@ZenDog I'm not sure.

I'm 19 years old, and I'm faced with the same exact decision. I think that taking a year off for solitude would be the wise decision, but I'm not really sure how to go about doing it.

@Actualizer Once again, limitations of language. Awareness only knows itself, but I have to use seemingly dualistic language in order to explain that the concept of awareness, is not awareness. (Even though the concept that appears within awareness IS awareness, because awareness is all there is.) Speaking about awareness is impossible... Just turn inward lmao.

@Actualizer What arose out of the repetition of concepts was the illusion of self, not awareness. Awareness is that which allows the concepts to be known, whereas the illusion of self requires concepts to remain sustained.

How could awareness have been created out of repetition of concepts, when awareness is prior to the concepts?

The border of self/other, experiencer/experienced is illusory, there is simply experience itself.

@Actualizer I meant that awareness must exist for anything to be known. Awareness is prior to everything. It's difficult to translate these ideas sometimes because of the limitations of language, and the words are never the truth.

@Actualizer If there is absolutely no awareness, then how could the thoughts be known? Even by claiming that the thoughts could be self aware implies that there's an awareness. Claiming that thoughts could be self aware is contradictory to your experience. Thoughts having self awareness means that each individual thought is aware of itself, which would make awareness thought dependent. Observing direct experience will show you that there is an awareness independent of the thoughts, which would be impossible if the thoughts were self aware.

@Actualizer Saying to yourself "If i'm aware of the body - i'm not the body" is another story, but the story appears within what it was attempting to point to. The story could never truly convey the reality, because the story is an appearance within what it is trying to convey. The words "If i'm aware of the body - i'm not the body" are not true, the reality of what the words are pointing to is what's true. This is why Leo says the map is not the territory. You cannot be both the thoughts and the awareness because who is it that would be claiming to be the thoughts? The only thing that could claim to be a thought, is another thought. Thought has to identify with itself. But, in order for any of those thoughts to even exist in the first place, there would have to first be an "awareness" for them to arise within.

@Socrates It's definitely a gift. In contrast to when I was younger, I would never want to be more like everyone else anymore.

@Socrates It basically sums up how I feel. The alien with tears streaming down represents how I've always felt different, and was basically always isolated from society. His hands in a prayer like position, and the golden circle in the background which could symbolize a halo, is representative of my devotion to seeking Truth, Being, God, or whatever you want to call it.

@Henri ^

@Socrates In my experience, I have changed many beliefs and habits. What seems to occur is that I don't revert back to the initial habit, but rather the habit that is directly prior to the new one. This is what I mean by this: Lets say I had the habit of watching TV, but then this habit got replaced by the habit of playing videogames. Then after the habit of playing videogames has been established for a while, I decided to replace this habit with writing. If I were to stop writing, I wouldn't regress to the initial habit of watching TV. I would instead regress to the habit that was directly prior to the habit of writing, which is the habit of playing videogames. What do you think?

@Socrates It currently doesn't seem true to me that you can only add to it rather than alter it, but I would need more self analysis before I can conclude either way.